Static Site Generators

Static site generators build sites from Markdown and each offers a different set of features. What they produce is static set of html files that can be served by different hosts such as GitHub Pages, Netlify, Vercel, and many more.

I’ve tried plenty of of generators, and here’s my 2 cents of each of them.

Docusaurs

• Language: Typescript
• Intended Audience: Documentation
• Where I Use It:
  • Psake
• Positives
  • Versioned Docs - This is very helpful to track when new versions break changes.
• Negatives
  • Slow to generate pages!
  • No automatic rebuild. This means killing the server and re-running.
  • No commenting options.

Hugo

• Language: Go
• Intended Audience: General
• Where I Use It:
  • Blog
• Positives
  • Lot’s of flexibility
  • Simple to modify templating system
  • Automatic RSS feed
• Negatives
  • Heavy use of submodules can be difficult to deal with.
  • All the flexibility can be overwhelming if you’re not familiar with programming templates.

Jeckyll

• Language: Ruby
• It’s been a VERY long time since I actively used Jeckyll. It was only markdown docs at the time.
• This is the default for GitHub Pages.

MkDocs

• Language: Python
• Intended Audience: Documentation
• Where I Use It:
  • PS Modules such as ChocoLogParse, Log4NetParse, MazeRats, etc.
• Positives:
  • Simple configuration file.
  • Large plugin system.
  • Material for MkDocs
• Negatives:
  • Issues with trailing slashes.
  • Default case sensitive.

Quartz

• Language: Typescript
• Intended Audience: DigitalGarden and Notes as A WebSite
• Where I Use It:
  • This site!
• Positives:
  • Easy to use with Obsidian. (see Publish to Quartz Repo)
  • Graph view of interconnected notes.
• Negatives:
  • Smaller community. (Positive is it’s very active)
  • “Plugins” aren’t really a thing. You copy changes shared by others in the discord.