purple cello

Static site generators

I have created many static sites over the years, using various different ways. From creating PHP templates, to try and stitch together partials with clumsy bash scripts, to using static site generators.

Every static site generator I've used, had some shortcomings. Some, such as Flask with Flask-FlatPages, I was able to make them do exactly what I needed them to, but they were painfully slow, especially when many pages and posts and taxonomies were involved. Some, such as Jekyll were a bit too opinionated. Some made extensive use of JavaScript frameworks, that are overkill for my simple needs. Some I didn't like the output.

To kick off my new blog, I will try and use various static site generators and write for each of them: (1) a "how-to" to create a simple blog, hopefully covering a bit more than the documentation, and (2) a "review", on what I think of them in regards of ease-of-use, flexibility, customizability and build speed.

To be precise: Both the how-to and the reviews for each SSG will be reflecting how well it fits my own needs. Not only my writings will not unbiased in any way, but they might not be useful at all if your needs are different. Here is a short, non-exhaustive list of what I am looking for:

• Ease of installation and configuration.
• Easy to create a simple, non-frills blog with.
• Clean HTML output.
• A templating language that I am comfortable with; so, anything similar to jinja2, including liquid and Nunjucks.
• Simple to having different templates for posts and pages.
• Ability to version-control the output directory.
• Ability to customise directory structure and URL paths.

Following is a growing list of what I've tried so far:

• Zola: How-to and [Review] - soon to be updated