Metalsmith VS Brunch

Metalsmith — the best customizable SSG

I use Metalsmith. Been happy with it. I build my site into a self-contained nginx docker image.

const Metalsmith = require('metalsmith') const markdown = require('@metalsmith/markdown') const layouts = require('metalsmith-layouts') const permalinks = require('@metalsmith/permalinks') const collections = require('metalsmith-collections') Metalsmith(__dirname) .metadata({ sitename: 'Website Name', description: "Website description.", generator: 'Metalsmith', url: 'https://metalsmith.io/' }) .source('./src') .destination('./build') // .clean(true) .use( collections({ projects: 'pages/*.md', reverse: true, refer: true }) ) .use(markdown()) .use(permalinks()) .use( layouts({ engineOptions: { helpers: { formattedDate: function (date) { return new Date(date).toLocaleDateString() } } } }) ) .build(function (err, files) { if (err) throw err })

I also started to move to hugo, but they didn't merge the pr [2] which would have helped in the transition. :(

The look is still similar to what it was in the beginning, in terms of colors at least.

[1] https://github.com/metalsmith/metalsmith

Metalsmith

A static site generator I've been enjoying lately (and using for my blog) is Metalsmith: https://metalsmith.io/

It feel like it's the best of both worlds, because it's simple to learn and customize, but there are plugins for the things you don't want to spend time writing yourself.

For example, I'm using plugins to: check for broken links, generate an RSS feed, and run a test server with automatic reloading.

But then I was able to easily add in my own code to handle relative links, generate Graphviz diagrams, and format dates.

One other recommendation: I hated almost every template language I ran across (Hugo's, Liquid, Nunjucks, EJS), but I'm thrilled with the simplicity of Handlebars (https://handlebarsjs.com/), although it is a bit limiting and the "block helper with parameters" syntax is strange (perhaps an indicator that I'm trying to do too much in the templating language!).

I believe Metalsmith [1] is trying that approach

[1] https://metalsmith.io/

Brunch is a lightweight JavaScript bundler focusing on simplicity and speed. Although it is less popular than Webpack or Browsify, it has an effortless learning curve with fantastic features to help developers focus on feature implementation rather than configuration. Brunch has more than 6.8K GitHub stars.

Brunch

So, the website looks promising: