What is your static site generator of choice and why?

[fbnlsr]

I'd be interested in knowing what is your static generator of choice, what do you like about it, and what are the cons?

I've been using Jekyll for years until I got super tired of the Ruby stack which is a total pain to manage. I switched to Hugo a couple of years ago, and while I like the fact that it's fast and contained in a single binary, its templating syntax is absolutely horrendous to use.

Let's talk static! 😀

 

[Gummibeer]

I vote 1000% opinionated but have to say Stancy - I wouldn't have created it (and still do) if I would be happy with one of the others. 😄

 

[fbnlsr]

That's pretty freaking awesome. You present Stancy as a CMS on the homepage? Does it have an admin GUI? Also, does it generate static HTML/CSS?

 

[Gummibeer]

No, and yes.

At the end it's a package that doesn't care about your app (except it should be Laravel/Lumen). It only provides the most common and simple features without limiting your possibilities. So it should be quite simple to create a GUI for it, it's based on files (markdown, yaml frontmatter, json, yaml). So you can simply create a GUI that writes files. But you can also register a custom sheet repository that loads from DB.

The static export is an option and based on spatie/laravel-export - it can copy files (JS, CSS) and also export generated HTML from your routes.

The documentation should cover the most important things atm (nearly everything the package can do).

 

[tungu]

My favorite is 11ty for its simplicity and variety of template languages.
I also like Middleman.

But you really need to check Unibit by Stackbit.
It uses Nunjucks and automatically converts to Jekyll, Hugo or Gatsby.

It comes with Uniform and is ready for use with Forestry, NetflifyCMS, Contentful, DatoCMS or Sanity.

 

[fbnlsr]

11ty does look nice indeed.

I've read about Gridsome today and it looks really interesting.

 

[Gummibeer]

Gridsome is/was my favorite beyond the existing ones.

 

[Pmcp]

11ty does look nice indeed.

I've read about Gridsome today and it looks really interesting.

Coming from Nuxt, I'm now trying Gridsome for the first time and really digg it. It's not necessarily better / more powerful, but I like the choices they made 🙌

 

[kilian]

I use Gatsby for most since I like writing React, but for something super simple I'll use Harp, since it does so much automatically without configuration (like sass, markdown and ejs compilation).

 

[ek1]

Not an expert but what I've seen of Gatsby has been great, up and running in minutes, plus I'm most comfortable with React. I'll definitely turn to it in the future. I've also never played with it but I hear 11ty is good too.

 

[Dominic]

I used Harp for some years for my personal pages. What I liked about it:

works different formats without configuration

What I didn't like:

Data files are just in JSON, which I don't like to write by hand.

I configured grunt to convert YAML files to JSON, but now there were two versions of the same data file around.

I don't like the organization of the date files, it's too complex with larger sites.

Because of these pain points and because it's practically unmaintained, I looked for an alternative.
It was hard to find something, which had everything I wanted, although there are so many
of them. What I want:

• TOML or YAML for data files
• Stylus for styles
• Pug for page templates
• Coffeescript for Javascript

First, I thought I had found with Hexo what I wanted. Until I got into limitations with the handling
of data files. So I decided to make my own one, which does exactly what I want. It was easier
than I thought. I did everything with grunt because I already had experience in
transforming files with it. Grunt is dead, I know, but hey, it still works and written in Coffeescript
the Gruntfile looks quite nice. I have now the following folder structure:

• data (markdown, YAML or TOML files)
• dynamic (stuff to processs like styles, scripts and pug templates)
• static (files to just copy)
• out (generated page is here)
• config.toml (configuration)

There is more to say to it. I build something I call 'generators' to define how pages get generated from
different data files. Say for example, you have one data file for a portfolio item, and a template. And
want to generate a page for every portfolio item.

I'm too tired now to write more ... ;) But I really like static page generators. Nice topic!

 

[fbnlsr]

Up!

I studied a bit of Zola's documentation and while it seemed absolutely perfect at first, it lacks one critical feature: the ability to browse and parse data files stored in a specific folder. I'm using Staticman to handle the comments on my blog, and I need to ability to do that. It's a shame that it can't, as it'd have been a perfect choice to replace Hugo. I'll probably switch to Gridsome then, I first need to read the documentation.

I might still use Zola, as it's really elegant, but I might have to chose another service to handle the comments on my blog. We'll see. 🙂

 

[blaq]

come on guys ... dont be haters everyone knows that Hugo is the best of all...

 

[fbnlsr]

Hugo's template engine is just awful to deal with.

 

[blaq]

Hugo's template engine is just awful to deal with.

have you at least tried it? it the simplest compared the others and its SEO and customization is infinity

 

[Gummibeer]

Hugo's template engine is just awful to deal with.

have you at least tried it? it the simplest compared the others and its SEO and customization is infinity

The best static site generator is the one who doesn't enforces a specific templating engine. 😉

 

[fbnlsr]

have you at least tried it? it the simplest compared the others and its SEO and customization is infinity

Woah I honestly don't know how you can find Go's templating syntax simpler than any of the others. I mean look at Liquid, Textile, Tera or even Twig, they're a million time easier that that weird thing. Or maybe that's just me.

Also, my current site is done 100% using Hugo, so I know my pain. 😄

 

[blaq]

Woah I honestly don't know how you can find Go's templating syntax simpler than any of the others. I mean look at Liquid, Textile, Tera or even Twig, they're a million time easier that that weird thing. Or maybe that's just me.

Also, my current site is done 100% using Hugo, so I know my pain. 😄

well-tried jeklly once but I find Hugo easier

 

[jarod_peachey]

Gatsby all the way (I've had sites load in under .5 seconds)! I use Gatsby a lot, I'm currently experimenting with Ghost and Gatsby

 

[Gummibeer]

Gatsby all the way (I've had sites load in under .5 seconds)! I use Gatsby a lot, I'm currently experimenting with Ghost and Gatsby

Your site load time doesn't depend on your static site generator. 😉
It's not loaded on client side. Your host and source code are fundamental for your loading time.