Siteleaf

Cleaning unused assets from your static website

Thu, 12 Sep 2024 10:49:00 -0400

As websites and blogs continue to grow, so can the amount of user-uploaded content like images and videos — especially when your site has multiple team members and writers. Over time, it can be tricky to figure out what’s actually used and what’s just collecting dust.

We recently helped a customer clean up 5 gigabytes(!!) of unused assets, and you might be surprised how much digital clutter is lurking on your site too.

Let’s dive in and see how much data you can free from your Jekyll website (and speed up build time while you’re at it!).

TL;DR You can now use the official Siteleaf Ruby gem to check for unused uploads by running: siteleaf clean. Skip to the end of this post to learn more.

How to check for unused assets

While you can use the Siteleaf gem to do this for you, follow along if you are interested in seeing how we got there (or want to write your own script).

First, you’ll want to build your full site (including all drafts and unpublished documents) to get a picture of what assets are in use:

$ bundle exec jekyll serve --unpublished --drafts --future

Now we can search the _site folder to verify if an asset (for example /uploads/screenshot.png) is linked or embedded somewhere in its outputted HTML files:

$ grep -rl "/uploads/screenshot.png" _site

This command will output a list of pages where the asset is either embedded using an <img> tag or otherwise linked on a page.

However Grep can be a little slow if you have a lot of content, so we can use The Silver Searcher to greatly speed things up.

To install on a Mac, run the following (see GitHub for other platforms):

$ brew install the_silver_searcher

Now you can search using:

$ ag -lQ "/uploads/screenshot.png" _site

Of course, you won’t want to search for each asset one-by-one, so we can write a simple shell script to loop through all the files in _uploads:

If you have files with spaces or other special characters, you’ll want to encode the filenames. We can use Jekyll’s URL.escape_path method to do just that.

Using the Siteleaf gem

To save you the hassle of maintaining your own script, we decided to add a simple command to our (open source) Siteleaf gem. It will automatically use The Silver Searcher if you have it installed, or otherwise fall back to Grep for searching.

First, add the following to your Gemfile (if you haven’t already):

source "https://rubygems.org"

gem 'jekyll'

group :development do
  gem 'siteleaf'
end

After a bundle update you can now run:

$ bundle exec siteleaf clean _uploads

This command will build your site locally, check for any unused files, and prompt if you would like to remove them. Note: _uploads is optional and used by default, you can also pass in a different folder such as assets/images.

Building Jekyll site...

Finding unused files...
_uploads/3D_slice.mp4
_uploads/Logo final final 2.svg
_uploads/Screen Shot 2020-09-16 at 9.42.59 AM.png
=> Delete above 3 file(s)? (y/n)

This all happens locally, and works with any Jekyll site — even if you don’t use Siteleaf. To fully remove the assets from Siteleaf and your published site, just commit and sync your changes with GitHub.

Happy cleaning!

Looking for a Forestry.io alternative?

Tue, 07 Feb 2023 11:30:00 -0500

Forestry.io, a fellow static site CMS, has announced it will be shutting down on April 21, 2023 (see Forestry.io’s End of Life announcement).

While this news is definitely a pain for website owners and developers who support these sites, we welcome those looking for a Forestry.io replacement to migrate their static websites to Siteleaf for free (and we’re here to help!). Siteleaf is a content management system with many of the same features, so we think you’ll feel at home here.

Why migrate to Siteleaf CMS?

Siteleaf has been trusted for over 10 years by companies like Microsoft, Kickstarter, Museum of Modern Art, and New York University. We are purpose-driven and here for the long haul.

Siteleaf has tight integration with GitHub Pages, which hosts over a millions websites built with Jekyll. You can also publish static websites to Amazon S3 (or any hosting of your choice), automate tasks with Zapier, and access a fully-featured API.

How do I move my site from Forestry.io to Siteleaf?

For websites built on Jekyll, you can import your site from GitHub with just a couple clicks. We have a free plan for open source developers, as well as affordable plans for personal and businesses (see our plans).

For complex sites or other static site generators (Next.js, Hugo, Gatsby, Eleventy, etc), our Enterprise team is happy to provide our white glove migration service (get in touch).

A quick tour of Siteleaf

Join us on GitHub Discussions

Tue, 09 Mar 2021 14:07:00 -0500

The Siteleaf Community now has a new home on GitHub Discussions where you can get help, vote on new features, and share what you’re working on!

To get started we created topics for:

❓ Community Support: Ask the community for help.
💡 Feature Requests: Vote and share ideas for new features.
🙌 Show & Tell: Show off something you’ve made.
💬 General Discussion: Everything else.

GitHub Discussions will replace our existing Slack community, and we look forward to building a more open, accessible, and searchable archive for questions that pop up often.

We also hope to offer a greater level of transparency by opening up our roadmap and allowing the community to vote on new features.

Most helpful

We’ll be rewarding the most helpful community members with exclusive perks:

GitHub will automatically recognize community members who contribute the most comments marked as answers within the past 30 days in the Community Support section. If you see your name in the leaderboard, we’ll be in touch to give you some exclusive perks as a thank you.

Join us at: https://community.siteleaf.com →

Introducing Siteleaf VIP: our affiliate program

Fri, 01 May 2020 10:30:00 -0400

Today we are officially launching our much requested affiliate program: Siteleaf VIP

We know a lot of our customers use Siteleaf with clients (and enjoy referring friends and colleagues), so we’re excited to say thanks and give back!

For every new user who signs up with your unique VIP link, you’ll earn a 30% commission for any paid sites they create. Depending on the plan chosen, you could earn over $1,000/year for a single referral — which recurs for as long as the site is active. For freelancers, this is a nice way to add a little recurring revenue to your income.

How it works

Sign up to create a unique referral link, and share this with your clients and colleagues. Feel free to add this link to your website footer and share it on social media. It looks something like this:

https://www.siteleaf.com/?via=yourname

You can link to any page on siteleaf.com by adding ?via=yourname to the end of the URL.

All you need to get started is a PayPal account, and you can keep track of your leads and conversions using the VIP dashboard at:
https://vip.siteleaf.com →

Thanks for using Siteleaf and continuing to spread the word!

Upgrading to Jekyll 4

Wed, 15 Apr 2020 10:41:00 -0400

Jekyll 4.0 is out in the world, and brings upon many improvements over 3.x.

Notably, your site should build much faster now thanks to super-powered caching and content transformations. You can see a full list of changes here.

While GitHub Pages is still pinned to Jekyll 3.8.x, it’s possible to start using Jekyll 4 today with a little help from Siteleaf.

Check out our upgrade guide to get started:
Upgrading from Jekyll 3.x to 4.x →

Here’s to speedy rendering! 🍃

New sites in our gallery

Wed, 01 May 2019 12:18:00 -0400

We’re biased, but we think the best sites use Siteleaf. Some of our favorites include Antfood, Capitol Cider House, and The Creative Independent. This week we added five new sites to our gallery.

Super Brewing Co.

Super Brewing Co. is an independent nano-brewery based in Oregon, who specialize making super beer. Their site is full of lovely design details & moments of joy.

Listen Up Biz

Listen Up Biz provides a bespoke 360 promotional service offering radio, club, streaming promotion and press campaigns globally. We love the hype video on their home page.

Bloomvale

Bloomvale work with CEOs and their senior management teams to drive growth and help technology and media companies. Their clean and simple website is a typographic delight.

Quinn Cantwell

Quinn Cantwell is a San Francisco-based video director who has worked with the likes of Everlane, SoulCycle, and Opening Ceremony. The straightforward design allows her work to shine.

Dropmark

Back with a fresh new design, Dropmark is a tool for teams and individuals to gather inspiration, share, and collaborate privately. The new ‘human-focussed’ look is an exciting step. Full disclosure, Siteleaf and Dropmark are both made by Oak Studios.

See all the other sites #builtwithsiteleaf on our gallery. Want to see your website in our gallery? Get in touch on Twitter or email us.

How to check your site for broken links

Tue, 09 Apr 2019 11:00:00 -0400

Clicking on links that are broken is a bad experience for users, and it can even affect your SEO. Thankfully, it’s really easy to automate the process of checking the links on your site using html-proofer.

You can install html-proofer however you like, for the sake of argument we’ll use bundle by adding the following to your gemfile:

gem 'rake'
gem 'html-proofer'

And then run bundle install. Then you can get html-proofer to check for any broken links using the following commands:

bundle exec jekyll build
bundle exec htmlproofer ./_site`

Then you’ll receive a breakdown of every external and internal link which is broken. Go forth and fix things! Hat’s off to Super Tech Crew for this tip.

Antfood

Thu, 06 Dec 2018 11:33:00 -0500

Antfood is a creative audio studio with offices in Brooklyn, Amsterdam, and São Paulo.

We are all about Antfood’s website, which is built with Siteleaf. In particular, their loading animations inject a touch of humor to the site, which transforms a potentially boring wait into a moment of joy. This playful style translates directly into their work.

It’s one of the only portfolios where exploring and finding hidden gems feels like an exciting quest and a considered part of the user journey, rather than an afterthought. This thoughtfulness is perhaps unsurprising as the site was designed by XXIX, who make amazing treats for the internet.

We chatted with Wilson Brown, ECD and Partner at Antfood, about curiosity, collaboration, and the year ahead.

Can you tell me about Antfood, and how you got to where you are now?

We started Antfood in 2007 and have grown slowly from there. I felt we had drive and some basic talent, but truthfully we were kids with little experience, no connections and zero capital. We got to where we are now by focusing on making great work and seeking out great collaborators, colleagues and projects.

I feel very grateful for the successes that we’ve had, and I’m proud of the reputation that we’ve built, but it was achieved very slowly, by taking little steps to improve our craft, team, physical studio, instruments, equipment, and over the years our portfolio. Even now, we’re still trying to do the same thing every day, to take on new challenges, hone our craft and do things that no one has done before — or at least we haven’t tried yet!

You’ve collaborated with some fantastic companies, are there any pieces of work that you continue to look back on and think ‘damn, that’s great’?

Thanks for the kind words. We take pride in building relationships and actively try to find like-minded creative collaborators, who we can help elevate their craft, and they can help elevate ours. Buck Design has been a great collaborator over the years, and we’ve worked together on the number of pieces together since 2009, that have been seminal for Antfood regarding process and creative, and I hope the same is true for Buck too!

I rarely look back at old work on a day-to-day basis, but often when we’re putting together talks for conferences or festivals, revamping our website or social presence, or just reflecting on our mission and values past and present, I love seeing the work we’ve done over the years. Sometimes these are big portfolio pieces, and sometimes they are forgotten or ignored projects, and I love seeing tiny strokes of genius, humor and artistry within the more generic projects, that you don’t necessarily appreciate at the time when you’re in the thick of production, approvals, and delivery.

Pedro and I are putting together a talk for a conference in Amsterdam next week, and I came across a couple of pieces that I had pushed to the back of my mind, but still love Freebord (2009), Sundance (2010), AICP (2017). Also, a perennial favorite, that was played out back in 2012, but I still I love going back to is our deconstructed, and dingy Kafka-esque piece with Buck, Metamorphosis for Good Books.

What does your creative process look like?

In composition, I try to vary my process, to ensure that I’m coming up with new and different ideas sounds, harmonies and textures. That can influence what kind of instruments or structural form I begin with, and what I deem the central elements of the composition.

For example, sometimes I’ll start with a beat or a harmonic framework and build everything up around that, other times I’ll start with the opinion, the voice or even a more abstract point of view and use what musical and arrangement tools I need to convey that idea best. Similarly, there are times where I start with a specific skeleton and fill it in, or other times I will start with more of an open palette and experiment until I find something that seems strong enough to inspire the rest of the compositional elements to fall into place around it.

More broadly speaking, whether I’m composing music and sound design, making creative decisions regarding the broader scope of projects, selling through concepts and ideas, or even helping to steer our company’s entrepreneurial vision.

I try to do simultaneously define some kind of North Star or guiding principle, that I can always go back and ask “are we getting closer to the goal, are we on track?” but at the same time, to encourage and welcome dissent, to stay curious and open-minded, and realize we often come across better solutions and better questions then we had in mind when we started the process.

With all that said, I try to be pragmatic, and diligent at stepping forward rather than backward or sideways to actually get things done.

I’m often afraid of work-related decisions. These can range from simple production questions like, “should I put a guitar in this track?”, to broader business decisions like personnel, visions for the future of the studio, and what kind of projects we should work on. But these are fears with a lowercase ‘f’, and I think fear is an important driving factor in my creative work.

As artists, we often are consumed by self-doubt and question our choices. I think overcoming these fears, embracing them or just putting your head down and pushing through them, is what makes us better artists and stronger human beings, and gives our life and our work meaning.

If I only worked on projects that were straightforward and didn’t require the need to doubt decisions, I’d likely just be making mindless and generic work, and I don’t think that would be a substantive professional existence. So, while excessive fear can be crippling, or at least counterproductive, personally I think it’s important to embrace and push through, rather than brushing it under the rug or avoiding it entirely.

How do you stay curious?

That’s a great question and a very important concept to me. Especially as we grow up, get consumed by work, routine, families, and the mundane aspects of modern life.

I try to seek out new music, art and experience, that open my mind to different emotions, ideas, thought processes, and techniques. First, I try to keep an open mind and try new things, especially things that scare you or take you out of your comfort zone. Second, maintaining an interesting and diverse group of peers, that bring different perspectives and taste to help broaden my awareness of Art, culture and more. Finally, more specific to my work composing music and crafting sound, I find that using particular tools and techniques, or setting limits on how to structure the creative process, helps keep me curious by diving into new areas that I might overlook or remain ignorant of.

I have the great luxury of working in a studio where we have all kinds of tools and toys, and I think when you have a lot of things at your fingertips, you can revert to common tricks and techniques that you’ve used before. While this is one of the luxuries of having all kinds of fun gear and instruments, it’s also important to place limitations on yourself sometime so you can actually dive into a particular instrument or sound and find something new.

What are you most excited about looking at the year ahead?

First, we had a great year in 2018, we worked hard on building solid systems, and a fantastic team, so that we could focus on what we do best - the work. We celebrated our 10-year anniversary with all three studios (New York, São Paulo and Amsterdam) for a week in Mexico. There, we spent a lot of time patting ourselves on the back for making it this far, but focusing on about what the next 1/3/5/10 years will look like for Antfood and what we can do to remain relevant as well as continue to get better over the coming decade.

Specifically for 2019, we are developing a couple of new means of production, both for the AR/VR space, and for nonlinear games and experiences, but also for mixing custom, multi-channel audio in physical spaces. We’ve developed some neat tools for playing with sound and space, and I’m hoping we can convince some clients and collaborators to help us bring them to a larger audience!

I’m looking forward to our amazing team to continuing to grow and evolve and be able to take on more unique projects and challenges. We’re building a new (and hopefully) fresh platform based on machine learning to help organize and repurpose our back catalog of work. Finally, I hope we have the chance to continue working with our favorite people and meet some new ones to craft amazing audio work that moves people and gives some meaning to those who helped create it!

See more of Antfood’s work at antfood.com on Instagram, Twitter, and Vimeo.

Summer of Siteleaf

Fri, 13 Jul 2018 13:07:00 -0400

Summer is the time for sun, sea, and Siteleaf. No, really.

Lots of festivals use Siteleaf to manage their sites. Siteleaf makes it easy for content creators to update static sites while still optimizing for site speed. Here are a few of our favorites.

Outside Lands

With sets from Janet Jackson, The Weekend, DJ Snake, Chvrches, Janelle Monáe, Carley Rae Jepson, and fifty more artists you can be sure that there’s something for you.

Outside Lands is a festival that takes it’s food as seriously as it’s beats. Featuring goodies from the top talent in the Bay Area including truffled grilled cheeses, arepas, Taiwanese snow cones, and liquid chocolate bars. We’re not even sure what a liquid chocolate bar is, but you can bet we want to try one.

They still have tickets available for the weekend, including VIP passes if you’re feeling fancy.

Grandoozy

Grandoozy has a sweet line up including Kendrick Lemar, Florence and the Machine, as well as the legendary Stevie Wonder. You can also break it down in the all-day dance area, which takes inspiration from Berlin’s infamous club scene.

Showcasing Denver’s craft brewery scene Grandoozy features 18 different breweries alongside Denver’s top distillers. Get involved and snap up tickets for this September’s festival.

Clusterfest

Clusterfest is a comedy festival in San Fransisco, featuring comedians like Amy Schumer, Trevor Noah, and Tiffany Haddish alongside drag royalty Bianca Del Rio and Jinkx Monsoon.

You could also step into some of your favorite comedy shows with Clusterfest’s unique experiences. Slip into Paddy’s Pub (from it’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia) for a pint, or munching down a Bluth’s Frozen Banana (from Arrested Development). Sadly Clusterfest is all out of bananas for 2018, but there’s always next June!

Bristol Comedy Garden

Over the pond in England is a comedy festival that’s taking the South West by storm. Bristol Comedy Garden allows you to catch the best British comedians like Josh Widdicombe, Shappi Korsandi, and Alan Davis in a relaxed environment.

Bristol Comedy Garden is a bargain, with tickets for each evening ranging from £20-£25. So it’s no surprise that they sold out every show this year. Keep your eyes on their colorful site to see when next year’s line up gets announced.

Do you use Siteleaf for a festival, event, or conference? Let us know on Twitter.

New sites in Siteleaf's gallery

Wed, 30 May 2018 13:08:00 -0400

We’re probably a little biased, but we think the best sites use Siteleaf. Some of our favorites include Wade Jeffree, Girls’ Night In, and Upperquad. This week we added nine new sites to our gallery.

Capitol Cider House

Capitol Cider House is a new bar in Washington DC dedicated to showcasing cider producers within 200 miles of the Capitol building. They’ve even got a dog-friendly outside area.

Canlis

Just looking at the James Beard award-winning restaurant Canlis’ website makes us hungry. And sad that we don’t live in Seattle.

Dine

Dine is a creative design studio based in Beijing, who focus on designing for startups.

Dipmat

Dipmat is an Architectural Building company based in Melbourne set up by friends Adrian Poropat and Bevan Dimeck. The buildings they bring to life are #goals.

Earn Studios

Earn Studios are a team of strategists and inventors based in London who work with clients including Samsung, Univeral, and EE.

Light and Shade Media

Light and Shade Media are an Australian production house specializing in commercial production, documentaries, and online advertising.

Single Double

Single Double is an independent content agency in Melbourne. They are passionate about turning brands into publishers and making content people love.

South California Craft Coffee

Built by coffee and Siteleaf aficionado John Choura Jr., South California Craft Coffee is a curated list of great spots for your next caffeine fix.

Welcome Conference

The Welcome Conference is a place for hospitality professionals to come together in New York City. Their June conference line up includes Seth Meyers, Victoria Arlen, and Alan Mulally.

See all the other sites #builtwithsiteleaf on our gallery. Want to see your website in our gallery? Get in touch on Twitter or email us.

Siteleaf

Cleaning unused assets from your static website

How to check for unused assets

Using the Siteleaf gem

Looking for a Forestry.io alternative?

Why migrate to Siteleaf CMS?

How do I move my site from Forestry.io to Siteleaf?

Join us on GitHub Discussions

Most helpful

Introducing Siteleaf VIP: our affiliate program

How it works

Upgrading to Jekyll 4

New sites in our gallery

Super Brewing Co.

Listen Up Biz

Bloomvale

Quinn Cantwell

Dropmark

How to check your site for broken links

Antfood

Antfood is a creative audio studio with offices in Brooklyn, Amsterdam, and São Paulo.

We chatted with Wilson Brown, ECD and Partner at Antfood, about curiosity, collaboration, and the year ahead.

Can you tell me about Antfood, and how you got to where you are now?

You’ve collaborated with some fantastic companies, are there any pieces of work that you continue to look back on and think ‘damn, that’s great’?

What does your creative process look like?

When was the last time you were afraid of making a work-related decision?

How do you stay curious?

What are you most excited about looking at the year ahead?

Summer of Siteleaf

Outside Lands

Grandoozy

Clusterfest

Bristol Comedy Garden

New sites in Siteleaf's gallery

Capitol Cider House

Canlis

Dine

Dipmat

Earn Studios

Light and Shade Media

Single Double

South California Craft Coffee

Welcome Conference