Static site generators (SSG)ΒΆ

Note

This page is draft.

It is a follow-up to https://twitter.com/PogrebnyakE/status/1267016141848883202

Lessons learned:

  • blogging, landings and documentation are separate domains for static site generators(SSG)

  • maintaining visually attractive themes is hard, it is a lot of work

  • themes not easily portable between

  • some good themes/SSG may fall out scope for subjective reasons, can work well for other users

  • many cool themes historically developed for Jekyll and still Wordpress

  • Github Pages supports some blogging and not docs themes, need install Ruby otherwise

  • port of mkdocs-material to Hugo is 2017, and Hugo versions are way ahead

  • JS-based (React/Vue) generators are a world of its own to be discovered

  • top SSG amount 40k stars on Github (Next, Gatsby, Hugo, Jekyll) and next round of contenders around 10k (python-based), see https://www.staticgen.com/

Student project idea:

  • sort Hugo themes by popularity (stars) vs activity (last commit date or commits last 3 months)

  • Academic can easily get into top ranks in both, also has great language support

  • can help distinguish stable, emerging and forgotten themes (theme catalogs ususlly list them)

  • from a user story perspective - one may choose the theme first, SSG second

Some 2020 reality:

Computer wisdom