Static Site Generators (SSG)

A static site generator (SSG) is a software used to generate static websites. Usually in plain HTML with added CSS, and potentially little JavaScript.

Most importantly static sites do not have server-side logic, so for any given URL, all users will receive the same content. Which makes it fastest website, as there is not faster way of plain old HTML.

Not optimal for interactive content, but super optimal for static content like blogs, or notes, websites, etc. That’s why my Second Brain and website (blog) is all built on top of GoHugo. For my book, I use mdBook which is a SSG as well, but for books specific. See more on Create a Book on Markdown.

First of all, see Why have your Website. But generally, SSG for the win, since the blogs are just Markdown. If you want to use them locally or just for your own sake later, even if the website is down, you can still have your blogs and search, connect, etc., since it’s plain Markdown. No lock-in into a HTML or Rich Text CMS.

But also, if you have to or must go with Medium, Substack, or anything else, at least connect it to your domain so you can own domain ranking and links, even when you move on (just need to re-route existing blogs, which is quite easy).

• GoHugo - The one I use for all My Websites (see also My Tech Stack): An fast static site generator written in Go, known for its speed and large theme ecosystem.
• Quartz: Turns an Obsidian vault into a fully-linked, searchable static website with graph view.
• Astro: A modern static site framework focused on content-heavy sites that ships zero JavaScript by default via its islands architecture.
• Gatsby: A React-based static site generator with GraphQL data layer, suited for larger, data-driven sites.
• Jekyll: A Ruby-based static site generator tightly integrated with GitHub Pages, great for blogs and simple sites.
• Pelican 4.8.0 (Python): A Python-based static site generator that supports Markdown and reStructuredText with a mature plugin ecosystem.
• Ghost: A all inclusive hosted solutions: Uses Node.js-based open-source publishing platform combining CMS and static site capabilities with a polished editor.
• 11ty: A simple, flexible JavaScript static site generator that works with multiple templating languages and has no client-side JS overhead.
• Publii: A desktop-based CMS for Windows, Mac and Linux that makes creating static websites fast and hassle-free, even for beginners, with a GUI similar to WordPress or Joomla.
• kamal-skiff by 37Signals and DHH: Deploys static sites using nginx with Server-Side Includes (SSI) via Kamal, auto-pulling changes from a Git repository every 10 seconds.
• Python:
  • Markata: A “plugins all the way down” static site generator written in Python, where all behavior can be changed by swapping, installing, or writing your own plugins. by Waylon Walker
  • Markupdown: A dumb-but-programmable static site toolkit for Python — more like a build system than a full framework — where you compose functions to copy, update frontmatter, render, and minify your site. by Chris Riccomini
• Quarto: Creating a Website: An open-source scientific and technical publishing system supporting notebooks, Markdown, and multiple output formats including websites, books, and presentations.
• Weblorg: A Static HTML Generator for Emacs and Org-Mode

See also Headless CMS and Content Management System (CMS).

This can also be achieved with the ones above, but these here are specifically made for docs websites.

• Docusaurus: A Meta-maintained React-based documentation site generator with versioning, search, and i18n built in.
• Read the Docs: An open-source platform for hosting and automatically building software documentation from your repository.
• MKDocs: GitHub - mkdocs/mkdocs: Project documentation with Markdown.: A fast, simple static site generator geared towards building project documentation from Markdown files with a single YAML config.
  • theme for it: - GitHub - squidfunk/mkdocs-material: Documentation that simply works: A polished, feature-rich Material Design theme for MkDocs that has become the de facto standard for Python project docs.
• ReadMe: A hosted developer hub platform for building interactive API documentation and developer portals.
• More from Hackernews: Ask HN: Best tool used for hosting API and technical documentation | Hacker News

• mdBook: A Rust-based tool for creating online books from Markdown files, used by the Rust project itself for its official documentation.
• GitBook: A modern, collaborative documentation platform with a polished online editor for teams writing technical docs and internal wikis.
• More on Create a Book on Markdown

• fastHTML: A Python web framework by Jeremy Howard that minimizes the need for JavaScript and CSS by using HTMX, letting you build full web applications in pure Python.
• Plain HTML: Writing my own damn HTML by Clayton Ramsey: A case for hand-writing raw HTML as the most direct and dependency-free way to publish on the web.

See Open-Source Obsidian Publish Alternatives.

Origin: