Metalsmith VS Hexo

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/

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.

Hello Joe_Boogz,

Blog is using Hexo (https://hexo.io/) and a little modified Cactus theme (https://probberechts.github.io/hexo-theme-cactus/). If some of the websites looks interesting to you and you would like how they are built you can use Wappalyzer (https://www.wappalyzer.com/lookup/0ut3r.space)

How do you manage the content? Or does the customer contact you and you edit the static sites yourself? I'm thinking about using hexo.io (made lots of great experiences with that) and the admin-plugin, so I can offer possible clients that they can edit the content themself, without needing me and without losing page speed.

Hexo

I have personally used hexo[1] successuccessfully in th epast and would recommend it. Though any ssg, likd zola[2], should be enough.

If youyou're comfortcomfortable writing html directly it will also suffice. Make a list of what you need (posts, kmages, videos , comments) and compare SSGs[3].

[1]: https://hexo.io/

I recently created my static blog site using hexo.io. It’s command line driven and Markdown based. One comnand to add a new Markdown file, one to build, one to deploy to DreamHost.

After searching for a while, I found Hexo, an SSG. I was interested on working on this one since I am working on an SSG myself. I thought, "maybe I can get some inspiration from them on how to approach the design of my SSG🕵️‍♀️🕵️‍♀️"