Hexo VS Jekyll

A lot of great suggestions here and some stuff I’ve never heard of before!

Throwing my own suggestion into the ring, as I was just looking into this last week.

I started setting up a blog using Hexo. It’s another Node based SSG that uses markdown and supports tags. It has a lot of neat plugins that people have developed, too.

I like it so far!

https://github.com/hexojs/hexo

In my case, the latter is not possible because this blog is a static site, generated via Hexo and hosted on GitHub. It simply lacks a modifiable active server component.

Hexo — best lightweight SSG

Previously I've used Nuxt2 and even sooner - hexo.io

To make their creation easier, numerous open-source static websites generators are available: Jekyll, Hugo, Gatsby, Hexo, etc. Most of the time, the content is managed through static (ideally Markdown) files or a Content API. Then, the generator requests the content, injects it in templates defined by the developer and generates a bunch of HTML files.

https://gohugo.io/ written in go, support md https://hexo.io/ written in node

Hexo's

I'm currently using Hexo, I write articles in markdown, commit them to a git repository and push them to Github. I then have a Github Action to bundle the static website and publish it on Github Pages, so I get free hosting 👌

There are also many alternatives for selecting Static-Side Generating blog framework such as Hexo, Gatsby, Next.js (more details here). We will pick Hexo as our framework because it is a fast, simple & powerful blog framework.

Some alternatives I'm considering learning instead of Gatsby are Jeckyll or Hexo.

This blog is running on Hugo. It had previously been running on Jekyll. Both these SSGs ship with the ability to create excerpts from your markdown content in 1 line or thereabouts.

Jekyll

In future, if you want to move from Jekyll to something else, you just have to worry about that `_posts` and `_assets` folder. They may have different naming convention but you can just config-managed it or change it to your choice. This is why I suggested owning that two yourself.

You also may not worry about FrontMatter[3] (meta in the header) and its accompanying jazz by asking Jekyll to use the plugins `jekyll-optional-front-matter` and `jekyll-titles-from-headings`. These comes as part of the officially supported Jekyll plugins[4] by Github. That way, you are just writing a human-readable plain-text spiced up with Markdown and readable by almost every other Static Site Generator.

Now, play with the `_config.yml` that Jekyll generates for you from the theme above to define your post dates, navigation, and others. Jekyll is one of the OGs — the Gandalf of Static Site Generators. If you have a problem, someone somewhere has solved that.

Did I missed something? I was supposed to write a blog article for my website on this one and this comment will serve as my starting bullet points.

1. https://docs.github.com/en/pages/setting-up-a-github-pages-s...

2. https://jekyllrb.com

3. https://frontmatter.codes/docs/markdown

4. https://docs.github.com/en/pages/setting-up-a-github-pages-s...

"Using the Chirpy theme for Jekyll."

I would suggest looking into static site generators. Some popular examples, which are used myself are: - Hugo: https://gohugo.io/ - Jekyll: https://jekyllrb.com

In terms of GitHub stars, SSGs like Next.js, Hugo, Gatsby, Docusaurus, Nuxt.js, and Jekyll top the list. Some popular SSGs even host conferences and workshops, providing resources and networking opportunities for those looking to explore more advanced topics in depth.

I created my blog using Jekyll, a great open-source tool that can transform your markdown content into a simple, old-fashioned-but-trendy, static site. What are the advantages of this approach? The site is super-light, super-fast, super-secure and SEO-friendly. Of course, it’s not always the best solution, but for some use cases, like a simple personal blog, it’s really a good option.

Yes, it's Markdown and I use https://jekyllrb.com with the theme "jekyll-theme-hacker" to generate the site. I quite like how simple it is.