16 releases 17 tags

RSS feed

• 0.32.0 f8f4e18be7

  Compare

  0.32.0 Stable

  stefano released this 2025-07-17 09:11:26 +02:00 | 15 commits to main since this release

  Key Highlights in 0.32.0

  1. Asset Pre-Compression Feature

  The headline feature of this release is the introduction of asset pre-compression. This powerful new capability allows for the creation of gzipped versions of text-based assets (.html, .css, .xml, .js) during the build process.

  Performance-First Architecture:

  • Faster Load Times: By serving smaller, pre-compressed files, your website's loading speed can be dramatically improved. This leads to a better user experience and can positively impact SEO rankings.
  • Reduced Server Load: Compression is a CPU-intensive task. By compressing assets once during the build process instead of on-the-fly for every request, server CPU cycles are saved, which is particularly beneficial for high-traffic sites.
  • Bandwidth Savings: Smaller file sizes translate directly to reduced bandwidth consumption, which can lower hosting costs and improve performance for users on slower networks.

  Flexible Configuration:

  # Control asset pre-compression in config.sh.local
  PRECOMPRESS_ASSETS=true    # Enable/disable the feature (default: false)
  

  To leverage this feature, your web server (like Nginx or Apache) needs to be configured to serve the .gz files when available.

  2. New Themes

  This release is enriched by the addition of two new themes, showcasing the creativity and collaborative spirit of the BSSG community.

  "Thoughtful" Theme:

  • A minimalist and accessible theme designed to provide an optimal reading experience, perfect for personal blogs and long-form content. Its design focuses on clean typography and a layout that keeps the reader's attention on the content.

  "Cyber-Dark" Theme by Nigel Swan:

  • A visually striking, cyberpunk-inspired theme featuring neon shadows and a dark, futuristic aesthetic.
  • This theme was contributed by community member Nigel Swan (lowkey.party). A special thanks to Nigel for this unique and exciting addition to our theme collection.

  3. Enhanced Privacy and Dependency Cleanup

  In a move to improve user privacy and reduce external dependencies, all remaining Google Fonts have been removed from the BSSG codebase.

  • Improved Privacy: Self-hosting fonts prevents the transmission of user IP addresses to third-party servers, which is a key consideration for GDPR compliance.
  • Better Performance: Removing requests to external font providers can reduce DNS lookups and improve page load times.
  • Full Control: This change gives site owners complete control over their assets, ensuring that their sites are self-contained and not reliant on external services.

  Technical Implementation Details

  Asset Pre-Compression Workflow

  The pre-compression system is seamlessly integrated into the existing build process.

  1. Asset Discovery: The build script identifies all text-based assets (.html, .css, .xml, .js) within the public directory.
  2. Gzip Compression: Each discovered asset is then compressed using gzip, creating a corresponding .gz file alongside the original.
  3. Server Configuration: For this to be effective, web servers like Nginx can be configured with gzip_static on; to automatically serve the compressed versions to browsers that support them. Apache can achieve similar results with mod_deflate and mod_rewrite.

  This build-time approach ensures that the performance cost of compression is incurred only once, rather than with every visitor request.

  Important Update Notes

  Backward Compatibility:

  • Asset pre-compression is disabled by default. You must enable it in config.sh.local to use it, ensuring no breaking changes for existing sites.
  • All current themes and configurations will continue to work without any required modifications.

  Performance Impact:

  • Enabling pre-compression will result in a negligible increase in build time.
  • The trade-off is a significant improvement in your site's loading speed and a reduction in server overhead.

  Theme Integration:

  • The new "thoughtful" and "Cyber-Dark" themes can be enabled by setting the THEME variable in your configuration file.

  Get the Update!

  Ready to speed up your site and explore new designs?

  Upgrading is straightforward:

  1. Pull the latest changes from the repository.
  2. To enable asset pre-compression, add PRECOMPRESS_ASSETS=true to your config.sh.local file.
  3. Ensure your web server is configured to serve pre-compressed content.
  4. To switch to a new theme, simply update the THEME variable in your configuration.

  Downloads

  • Source code (ZIP)
    9 downloads
  • Source code (TAR.GZ)
    19 downloads