10 best static site generators (Part 2)

We continue the review of static site generators begun in the last article .

6. Octopress

From a technical point of view, Octopress is a modified branch of Jekyll, but due to its enormous popularity, it is also on this list. Octopress is basically Jekyll for hackers (and Rails developers). Octopress is fairly easy to customize, especially if you are creating a blog, because Octopress by default includes a large number of plugins that you will need to run a blog on Jekyll.

In terms of customization, Octopress code provides an easier way to modify and write your own code. As already mentioned, most Octopress plugins are compatible with Jekyll (and vice versa).

To install Octopress:

1. Copy the GitHub repository

git clone git://github.com/imathis/octopress.git octopress
cd octopress

2. Establish relationships

gem install bundler
rbenv rehash # Если вы используете rbenv, измените эту строку, чтобы иметь возможность запускать команду пакета
bundle install

3. Install the standard Octopress theme

rake install

7. Docpad

Docpad is a dynamic generator of static sites. It offers more extensive capabilities than other static site generators, offering features such as querying a database through the query engine, importing pages from external databases, and re-displaying a web page for every request.

Docpad has built-in support for preprocessors such as Coffeescript, Stylus, and LESS, and uses plugins to support template engines, preprocessors, and markup languages, so you can choose any combination you want using the required plugin. Docpad also supports importing pages from external sources, such as Tumblr, GitHub and Dropbox, through plugins.

Docpad is a multi-functional platform with a huge number of plugins and excellent documentation. To communicate with the server, it uses Node.js, on which it is built.

Just install Docpad with

npm: npm install -g npm; npm install -g docpad@6.78

8. Hexo

Hexo is a lightweight shell for static blogs, which is characterized by the huge speed of generating sites. Hexo is great for bloggers with lots of content that need a simple static site generator. It offers a convenient migration feature from other blog platforms such as WordPress, Joomla, Jekyll, Octopress and RSS. And what’s most important in Hexo is that you can use most of the plugins created for Octopress in it (and, therefore, plugins created for Jekyll with very minor changes).

Hexo supports Markdown, YAML for creating a cover page and customization. And without losing its characteristic speed, Hexo allows you to deploy to sites such as GitHub, Heroku and Rsync with just one command.

Hexo can be installed using Node.js:

npm install hexo-cli -g

9. Hugo

Hugo is a generator of static general-purpose sites with excellent universal features such as support for templates and components, pagination and taxonomy, which was originally a unique categorization system inherited from Hugo. This means that you can divide posts into classes not only based on tags, but also in any other way you choose, for example, by category or series, starting from the title page. Hugo supports three types of data files - YAML, JSON and TOML, and allows you to choose which is more convenient for you to work with.

Instead of plug-ins, Hugo uses “short codes” that allow you to use rich content inside Markdown. To find out how it works, check out this article. Hugo is written in the Go programming language and offers separate installation files for various platforms on its GitHub page. To find out exactly how to install Hugo in your case, read the Hugo installation instructions.

If you are using Homebrew, then Hugo and all interdependencies can be installed using the following command:

 brew install hugo

10. Brunch

Brunch is aimed more at web applications in HTML5, than at blogs and web sites, but nevertheless it is very simple in use and fast generator of static sites. It not only compiles all your code and scripts, but can also automatically reduce (minimize) your code and compress images. Brunch includes a number of plugins that you can use to customize the generator to suit your needs. A complete list of Brunch plugins can be found here.

Brunch offers "skeletons", which are mainly templates for creating a website (or web application). It provides almost the highest compilation speed, simply because Brunch caches all immutable parts of your project and compiles only those files that have changed. Brunch is built on Node.js and installed using the following command:

npm install -g brunch