SSGs handle the build process before the pages are requested by the client, meaning that they’re ready to serve when requested.
Some of the most common choices include NextJS, Gatsby, Hugo, Jekyll, Eleventy, Nuxt, Hexo, and many others.
Which ones have you tried and what are your favorites?
Top comments (29)
Hugo. It's the fastest by far which means it's more suitable as sites get bigger. The reduced time also translates to reduced build times by your hosting company which can mean lower cost. I also really like that it's just one file that you can use anywhere.
I've also tried Jekyll and Eleventy.
The downside of Hugo is that although there is a lot documentation it's not the most easy to understand for some: I think that will depend on one's background though.
I would also recommend Hugo. For me an important thing that I was looking for, when picking up an SSG was, that there would be a lot of ready to use, well documented themes (I was felling pretty lazy when changing my website 😄).
I would also agree with @xixianykus that how fast will you get the generator depends mainly on what you were working with previously. I'm working on the frontend in frameworks like vuejs or angualr and there are a lot of similarities between them and Hugo. I just watched the tutorial which introduced me into the hugo development and was ready to go.
Afaik most of them claim to be 'blazing fast', Gatsby being one of the first examples to come to mind 😀😀 Irl Hugo has been often referenced from devs as being the fastest ⚡
I have a couple favorites depending on the scenario.
If I am building a site that doesn't have complex UI functionality that may require a framework (like React), I use Hugo. It's blazing fast and I have been able to do pretty much anything I want with it (for example, cfe.dev has login, search, etc. and it's all Hugo).
If I need complex UI functionality and want a framework, I go with Next.js. I like the way next handles things like routing and static props. The learning curve feels steep to me and I often feel like I am fighting difficult debugging related to client vs. server values, but those are just some complications of using a frontend framework for Jamstack sites, not specifically any issue with Next.
SvelteKit ;)
Really want to use it, waiting for it to get stable...
did you try sapper as well before that?
Yes, but only indirectly, by using routify ( routify.dev/ ).
Now im researching options when it comes to SSG im considering SvelteKit or Elder.js (Svelte syntax)
I love Nuxt + Nuxt contenti. I can config and customize it with my Vue knowledge. WindiCSS integrates with Nuxt well.
I also like Hugo but I think the template and taxonomy are difficult to understand. I do understand about template but I cannot understand taxonomy system enough to make anything (category, tag) about it.
I'm quite enjoying using Zola for personal projects. Other than that Hugo is always a solid bet.
I keep my eggs in multiple baskets.
/t/ has Jekyll.
/study/ has Hexo.
I made custom themes for both, on day 0.
2017 rebuild blog post
Jekyll is fast but I don't know Ruby so I can't change it much.
Hexo is slow but I can read JavaScript to understand how it works, and customize to some extent.
P.S. if you need server side rendering for your staticgen, see:
dev.to/yoursunny/the-worst-server-...
Gatsby, because it's the only one I've tried so far and still have lots to learn about it.
I’m building my own so it’s my favorite :)
It’s going open source soon.
I like Gridsome a lot because it's based on Vue and was an easy transition from Gatsby since it was heavily inspired by Gatsby 💚
Nuxtjs + nuxt-content and netlifycms is a really good combo when content are written by many users.
Content! Yeeep good module!