Looking for a recommendation

I am currently using Hugo as a static site generator for my blog. It's not bad but rather limited. Does anybody know about something that would be equally as lightweight but offer some more flexibility. I just don't know what is out there so anything you guys could come up with would be appreciated.

23 comments

There's a big filterable list here: https://staticgen.com/

I've been using Pelican for a few years. It's reasonably lightweight and very flexible, although the configuration could be prettier.

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What do you find limited about Hugo?

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- The only limiting factor is really that if I am, say, in a public place that bans SSH access or SFTP access. I am starting to see more of this as deep packet inspection becomes available to the masses now. I could be composing my blog post on my laptop but be unable to otherwise publish it if I am on such a network that combines deep packet inspection with locking down ports.
  
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  That is a networking issue which is not specific to Hugo. You need to solve this as most of the suggestions also involve SSH.
  
  One way is to use a VPN like openvpn or wireguard that can use a common port like 80 or 443.
  
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  You could also have your back end pull from a git repo every minute. A cron job could check a GitLab repo for changes and update the site if any changes are found.
  
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My blog is hosted on GitHub pages and it supports Jekyll. I use the MinimalMistakes template.

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- That's a pretty good idea but I still want to keep doing the self-hosted thing. Nevertheless, it is lightweight and flexible.
  
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Jekyll is great with a bunch of narrow tailored plugins to add only functionality you need. You can self host or use GitHub Pages (they only allow approved list of plugins).

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- I found this article questioning the future of Jekyll. It says one of the maintainers of Jekyll suggested 11ty as an alternative.
  
  I have zero experience with either, tough; YMMV.
  
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  It's still being developed 🤷 and as it's an open-source project it can always be forked if the maintainers decide to stop.
  
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I recall eleventy being pretty good.

I had one issue with it, re how it generated links, that didn’t match how I needed it to in order to migrate my site, which was a dealbreaker for me. But other than that, it was solid.

I despise jekyll, purely from the standpoint of the state of their documentation.

There was another, that was extremely lightweight and configurable, at the cost of requiring much configuration - I think it was called “metal” - if I can find it I’ll report back

Edit: Hexo and Metalsmith. Hexo scratches my javascript itch; metalsmith is extremely versatile - it’s more of an erector set than a finished thing.

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- Thank you! I'll check out Eleventy. I also recently learned about Publii which might be a possibility.
  
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Docusaurus is very simple although less customizable. I really like Astro as it is fast and very flexible

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In my experience this is one of those things where you'll never find something that's perfect, and have to settle for something.

I've been using metalsmith for years. The plugin ecosystem is a bit of a mess these days I think. IDK what else is available so can't make a recommendation.

Check out jamstack.org

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- Thank you!!! I sure will!
  
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