Static website generator?

[MikeHart]

Do any of you use or have experience with static website creators like Hugo, Jeckyll or others?
Which one do you prefer and why?

 

[ddabrahim]

I have no experience but I was also considering to replace WordPress with "something" on my blog because of performance issues, crashes and hacks. But I also don't know what to use instead because I also don't want to get deep in to developing and maintaining the website. So I just postponed the change until my blog breaks because of a hack or something and I get upset.

Hugo seems more promising to me because:

-it is written in Go
-promise good performance and because of Go, I am optimistic about it
-promise good SEO and again because of Go I am optimistic about it
-promise to be able to host websites on any server Amazon, Azure, Google, GitHub, Apache, Node
-no dependencies just install Hugo and you can build websites
-have a dedicated themes page which I hope provide better security (themes being reviewed before added maybe)
-bunch of really nice themes and different layouts to choose from (again I am not much of a web dev so I love it)
-last commit was only 2 days ago
-documentation is easy to understand, workflow to develop pages, add content is straight forward

The reason Jeckyll is not my first choice is:
-it is written in Ruby (I don't know about it but seems all web developers hate it, some even calling it dead and slow?)
-do not really promise anything but "it is what it is nothing more or less" whatever it means. Yeah right.
-you have to have Ruby, cmake and gcc installed to build websites (I dislike to install bloat and I don't use Ruby, cmake and gcc at the moment)
-last commit was 2 months ago, maybe it is normal for the project they review the code make sure it safe..etc but....nah
-themes are offered through 3rd party websites, don't know how secure these websites
-I don't fully understand the docs, but probably it is just me being lazy

But I don't know really I could be totally wrong about this and Jeckyll is a much more robust and reliable and more secure solution.
Because I am also considering to replace WordPress for my blog, when you make your decision, would you mind sharing which one you are going to choose and why? Thanks

 

[MikeHart]

So far I tend towards Hugo, because it is just one EXE and thats it. No need to install other tools. That is what I like big time.
I just touched it very little so I need to study it more.

EDIT: The reason I am looking into this is to build a new home page for CX.

 

[ddabrahim]

Yes I remember you mentioned you wold like to make a new home page and that you would like to ditch WordPress.
Since I am in a similar shoe, I did a bit more reading and Hugo is pretty much remain my first choice/recommendation.

Here is also a nice article that compares them:
https://www.johnwordsworth.com/2020/08/hugo-vs-jekyll-a-static-site-generator-comparison

After reading multiple sources not jut the one above, It seems to me it is comes down to this:

Hugo is easier to get started, to configure and setup has more features, better compatibility, runs everywhere out of the box and can be 35x faster than Jekyll. But lack plugin support to extend with additional functionality and people seems to complain about that with each version it is changes so much if you want to stay up to date, you constantly need to rewrite your website for the latest version of Hugo. Available themes also often not compatible with the latest version. So if you want to stay up to date, you may need to put more effort in to Hugo to maintain the website.

Jekyll is more difficult to get started, slower, require more technical knowledge some argue the documentation is not great. But more reliable when it comes to long term support and maintainability, it is less likely break compatibility and do support Ruby plugins that make it more extendable than Hugo. But it is using Ruby (not sure why so many people simply put Ruby as con but it is great to have Ruby plugins) and having compatibility problems with Windows and very difficult to setup (maybe this is why?).

What I like about Hugo the most is the themes, they are really nice and fresh and modern, there is one for all sort of content including gallery, vlog, blog and even tutorials / documentation themes (happen to have some on my blog and I would like to improve the format and I do like the Hugo themes). But the fact people mention breaking changes with each version and themes are not always updated makes me a bit worry. But other than that I am also tend towards Hugo if nothing but because of better performance and compatibility.

Jekyll also has some nice themes but those are usually cost money. Most Jekyll themes just looks very cheap and basic. I don't know, maybe Hugo just doing better with putting the better looking ones on the front page.

 

[Phil7]

Hey @michalenkolorri, welcome to the forum!
@MikeHart already made a great website for Cerberus based on WordPress, but we wanted to keep it simpler, to avoid any issues with hacking and to minimize maintenance effort.

 

[MikeHart]

@Phil7 I deleted that user and another one including their posts. Both were listed on StopSpamForum with not enough entries to trigger the automatic rejecting of the forum during sign up. But these kind of 1st posts are very suspicious to me, that is why I checked into them.