Static site generator is a compromise between using a hand-coded static site and a full CMS. You generate an HTML-only website using raw data (such as Markdown files) and templates. The resulting build is transferred to your live server.
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Gatsby
Gatsby is a free and open-source framework based on React that helps developers build blazing-fast websites and apps.Visit site here
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Gridsome
Gridsome is a Vue.js-powered modern site generator that makes it easy and fun for developers to create beautiful JAMstack websites & PWAs that is fast by default.Visit site here
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Harp
The static web server with built-in preprocessing. Harp serves Jade, Markdown, EJS, CoffeeScript, Sass, LESS and Stylus as HTML, CSS & JavaScript—no configuration necessary.Visit site here
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Hexo
Hexo is a fast, simple and powerful blog framework. You write posts in Markdown (or other languages) and Hexo generates static files with a beautiful theme in seconds.Visit site here
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Hugo
Hugo is one of the most popular open-source static site generators. With its amazing speed and flexibility, Hugo makes building websites fun again.Visit site here
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Jigsaw
Jigsaw is a PHP static site generator using Laravel's Blade templating engine, Markdown for content-driven pages, and Laravel Mix allowing you to compile your CSS and JavaScript assets the same way you're used to in Laravel.Visit site here
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Metalsmith
An extremely simple, pluggable static site generator in Node.js.Visit site here
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Middleman
Middleman is a static site generator in Ruby using all the shortcuts and tools in modern web development.Visit site here
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Nextjs
With Next.js, server rendering React applications has never been easier, no matter where your data is coming from.Visit site here
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Nift
Nift is possibly the world's fastest website generator, developed from the ground up in C++.Visit site here
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Nuxt
Nuxt.js presets all the configuration needed to make your development of a Vue.js application enjoyable.Visit site here
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React Static
React-Static is a fast, lightweight, and powerful progressive static site generator based on React and its ecosystem. It resembles the simplicity and developer experience you're used to in tools like Create React App and has been carefully designed for performance, flexibility, and user/developer experience.Visit site here
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Sapper
Sapper is an application framework powered by Svelte — build bigger apps with a smaller footprintVisit site here
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VuePress
VuePress is composed of two parts: a minimalistic static site generator with a Vue-powered theming system, and a default theme optimized for writing technical documentation.Visit site here
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Stackbit
Stackbit isn't a static site generator in itself, but rather a really clever and useful service for spinning up a new site using your choice of static site generator, theme, CMS, and git service. Just minutes to spin up a new JAMstack site.Visit site here
Resources
I am just trying to put the collection of awesome services that will be very helpful for creating an application in a quick time.
Which is your favourite Static Site Generator? -- Mine is HUGO and NextJs.
If you have found this blog very helpful then if I had missed any important generator then please feel free to share your thoughts and opinions and leave me a comment if you have any problems or questions.
Till then,
Keep on Hacking, Cheers
Top comments (38)
Gatsby docs talk a lot about their output (pages) being super fast and including all kinds of tricks to squeeze the last drop of performance out of their static pages. I can't judge the technical merits of it but it's clear they've put a lot of effort into that. Hugo (being written in Go) is probably fastest with page generation though.
I think that Gatsby is turning out to be the "de facto standard", it's so well conceived and executed, with a huge ecosystem, I feel it makes the rest obsolete.
But I thought HUGO and Gatsby are the great combinations to learn, anyway thanks for sharing :)
A work colleague of mine is into Hugo and I believe it's cool as well. Programmed in Go and extremely fast.
we use Hugo, it's fast and you can embed it easily in a CI/CD chain with your source code to auto-generate updates
Full disclosure, creator/developer of Nift here.. You can reasonably easily embed Nift in a CI/CD chain similarly and it's even faster. It can be over 4 times faster at full builds and can be over 20 times faster during development from having incremental builds.
I've recently released some huge new versions with an in built template language n++ and in built scripting language f++, both of which use basically the same code so are very similar and have user-defined functions, full type systems with user-defined types with templates types (eg. templates in c++) etc.. Both in built languages have CLI interpreters and shell extensions, the f++ shell extension is getting really good! It also now has Lua(JIT) embedded in it so you have a full programming language that's often in top 20 programming language lists at your disposal, including all the packages you can install through LuaRocks that can be useful for web development, see here for example. It also has ExprTk embedded in it which is probably the fastest and best mathematical expression parsing library available.
You can inject the output of running scripts/programs/system calls at any point when building webpages which allows you to integrate with basically anything you want. I am just working on adding in pagination at the moment. If it all sounds interesting to you, wait a few days until v2.3 is out (watch out for pagination docs on the website) and give it a try! Am happy to schedule time to help people start getting their hands dirty with Nift too if anyone is interested, email me (contact@n-ham.com).
at the moment the sites that use Hugo cant just easily be transformed into using another platform. There has to be a serious reason for me to consider putting in days or maybe weeks of effort to redo all of it. So far Hugo works for what we need it do.
:)
Thank your for this post Nirazan.
I also recommend everyone to use this site, maintained by Netlify
staticgen.com/
Thank you for sharing this site. :)
Wow ty!
Our favorite is Gatsbyjs - you get a chance to work with Reactjs and all those modern tools out there.
Hugo is another one that is simple and blazingly fast
GatsbyJs is awesome too :)
Wait a moment, I guess that you know more about Gatsby than I do, but isn't it so that, as a SSG, Gatsby normally outputs static HTML pages?
So that's not your conventional SPA - it's more like an old fashioned static HTML site. What do you mean then by the bundle size being "larger than an SSG"? Even though you program your Gatsby site with React, the output normally isn't a React app.
(hydration, as I understood it, can then optionally overlay a React app on top of it, if you need 'dynamic' behavior, but this is optional - but I might be misunderstanding what hydration means, I'd need to read up on it)
The "speed tricks" (techniques) that they're referring to are things which improve your site's metrics in Lighthouse etcetera - optimizing images, the way CSS and other resources are bundled and loaded, and so on.
Love your enthusiasm, thanks buddy ... dev.to has a chat function built in doesn't it? yes it does, I should be able to hit you up on "dev.to chat" ... I followed you, if you follow me back then I'll be able to message you ... I'm off to bed soon however, let's do that tomorrow :-)
Hi Matt. I'm trying to build just simple portfolio websites for my friends. I specialize in Javascript and I'm comfortable with CSS too. I don't usually build websites since it's not what I do at work. I'm not yet sure what SSG to use. Would you recommend 11ty over HUGO?
I'm not that expert web developer and I'm actually using Jekyll for my personal blog. I find it very easy - also for customising CSS. I also tried GatsbyJS and it's incredibly fast! But ReactJS must be well known.
Keep exploring and thanks for your thoughts :)
Yes now I see your explanation I think it does make sense, thanks!
That's an eye opener. What's funny is that most blog articles and even the Gatsby docs themselves suggest (or even state) that Gatsby actually generates a static site and not an SPA.
I think that's not intentionally misleading or wholly inaccurate, it's just a technically simplified description. The way you explain it is the "accurate" version :-)
I now understand why you said that the bundle size is bigger (and why that's true).
So when you think about what Gatsby is doing it's pretty nifty, giving you the "illusion" of a static site (and actually all of its advantages, in terms of speed and SEO) but at the same time allowing SPA like capabilities. It's like "having your cake and eating it too" :-)
Right, but Gatsby (as you said) also "pre-generates" static pages (which are then subsequently hydrated to give full SPA capabilities), so the "time to initial page view" would also be quick with Gatsby - right? Javascript then needs to be loaded to make the page interactive but the content would already be there.
The way I see it (correct me if I'm wrong) is that Gatsby is more like a hybrid, it's SSG + SPA, while Hugo etcetera are pure SSG / static (you could then still include Javascript in those pages but it's not part of the "framework").
But if you develop a Gatsby page (or site) which doesn't need any interactivity then it would also not need "hydration" or would it? You then essentially have the "Hugo" model.
You also mention Nuxt.js, but I thought that was based on SSR (server side rendering), same like Next.js, although I heard that Nuxt and/or Next also have an "SSG mode" (so they can do "server side rendering" but 'in advance' instead of 'just in time'). But in principle SSR frameworks like Nuxt and Next need a server to run your "app".
Thanks, for this list. I just tried the Gatsby and Next.js. Maybe I will find my favorite :)
Talk me about your Next.js experience, please :)
This is my two production ready projects done with it:
GintautasRapalis.com
Gerlangas.lt. These projects are done with highly customized Next.js (App, and Document), because of routing transitions, data bindings and preloaders.
And I have some project in progress :)
Sure :)
I use Jekyll for my blog ! Even I built a theme out of it for Developers who want to create a blog using it - Checkout here - devlopr-jekyll 😃
Thank you for post.
My favorite for now is Hugo :)
Same here :)
Ey Nirazan! Nice help is yours. Can you write next some little tutos of usage about the ones you think that they are in fact useful? Thank you!
I am thinking about writing HUGO tutorials :)