Hi Marc

I wrote down this idea today and sent it to three people, hoping that the idea will somehow lead to better coordinating the website builder scene. It would be great if the three people would make the idea a reality.

Universal tool for website building, theme building and plugin building, with import/export functions for other website builders

Patrick Reto Bieri, Buenos Aires June 26, 2022

Dear software developers

I wrote down this idea because I would like to contribute something to ensure that the website building scene gets a strong tool that gives the user all the possibilities in one. So far I have not found anything on the Internet that corresponds to my idea.

To realize this project, you need knowledge in CMS, plugin building and static website generation. Therefore, I have informed the following three people:

Stephane from faboba, a very experienced software developer for various CMS.
[https://www.faboba.com]

Marc Anton Dahmen from Automad, a CMS developer.
[https://automad.org/]

Ole Vik from Grav, he has developed a plugin for static websites.
[https://olevik.me/]

What should it be?

A tool (CMS) with which a user without programming knowledge can create a website, including a theme builder and plugin builder, if possible drag and drop.

Additional:

The tool is able to generate a static website, with full functionality.

It can import plugins and themes from other website builders and use them via an interface without the plugins and themes being adapted to the tool (black box method).

It can export its own themes, plugins or entire websites, automatically adapted for other website builders.

It can integrate plugin functionality directly into themes and thus make the theme a hybrid between a theme and a plugin. This result can also be exported for other website builders.

It is multi-language capable, as a tool and also for the created themes, plugins and websites.

What are the advantages?

High portability, high compatibility, high usability.

The tool requires little own plugins and themes, as these can be imported from other website builders.

It serves a multiple purpose, flat-file CMS (possibly also as an option with a database), theme builder and plugin builder.

It can be easily installed, either locally or on a server and serves as a central development platform, also for other website builders.

It ends the fixation of a website project on a specific website builder and really gives the user the free choice. The user also gets the easy option to move his website from one website builder to another via the tool.

What could be used?

I have found a few additional projects that might be helpful.

Theme builder grapesjs, drag and drop
[https://grapesjs.com/demo.html]

Theme builder UIkit
[https://getuikit.com/]

Theme builder Foundation
[https://get.foundation]

Nikola, Static Site Generator
[https://getnikola.com/]

Pelican, Static Site Generator
[https://blog.getpelican.com/]

QGIS Plugin Builder
[https://g-sherman.github.io/Qgis-Plugin-Builder/]

What is my hope?

It would be great if this idea were realized one day and if other website builder teams would open up more for a constructive cooperation. Everything is open-source, but due to the many different methods and strategies of tool development, the choice once made remains practically mandatory for the user. With this idea, a quasi standardization could succeed and users could move their websites more easily without having to start from scratch again.

Thank you very much for your reading time and for taking note!

greetings
Patrick Reto Bieri
[http://linuc.hstn.me] (made with WP and falang, now as a not quite functional static website)