Please note that this version of the site is no longer being updated. All content has been merged with my IT Blog "Much Ado About IT". Click here to see this page on the other site. I've found that using Jekyll to be too fragile and complex. GitHub pages are too limited. The blog site was on WordPress (self-hosted) but that was too slow and clunky. The revamped blog now uses Hugo and is published using Netlify

Alternate static site generators to Jekyll

Jekyll is built on Ruby which is a pain to work with on Windows. It also doesn't match my chosen development language of JavaScript. Here are some possible alternatives to Jekyll along with some strengths and weaknesses.

Node.JS Based

All of this list use Node.JS to underpin the generation of static pages.

Hexo - seemed promising at first sight. But a quick dig through the impressive list of addins reveals many of them to be out of date or not working properly.
- ✅ Uses YAML configuration and Front Matter like Jekyll does.
- ✅ Large list of plugins, all published on NPM.
- ✅ Simple initial set-up.
- ❌ Many plugins out-of-date or not fully working.
- ❌ Many plugins very poorly documented or documented in Chinese.
- ❌ Does not handle page-based sites well. Focussed on blogging (posts).
- ❌ Needs plugins to provide more rounded capabilities.
Gatsby - Complex but comprehensive
- ✅ Large list of plugins published on NPM & GitHub.
- ✅ Large number of contributors.
- ✅ Powerful.
- ❌ Complex to configure, lots of moving parts.
- ❌ An aweful lot of “magic” happens! While the file system is reasonably well arranged it is very hard to reason about the logic.