MkDocs VS Hugo

The original mkdocs uses a Python package for its installer, so you can just pip install mkdocs, mkdocs new ., and then mkdocs build to convert markdown files into HTML.

If you don't like to run javascript outside of a browser, MkDocs is a great Python-based alternative: https://www.mkdocs.org/

I like Markdown because it's simple and doesn't give me that many headaches.

You know what I don't like? HTML, for user submitted content in particular. The mess I've seen, after someone opted for using HTML for messages in a system, because that's what JS based editors were available for at the time. Endless need to work against XSS, with more and more incremental updates needed to the sanitization logic, some of which broke the presentation of the data in the DB.

Never again. Markdown, BBCode, anything but that.

As for docs? Currently just some Markdown, because that's what GitHub, GitLab, Gitea and others all know how to render.

Maybe something like https://www.mkdocs.org/ for the more standalone use cases.

Developing the documentation website using an open-source static site generator like Sphinx or MkDocs to build the files locally through the command line, rather than using a commercial program.

MkDocs is BSD-2-Clause licensed and has a vibrant community; GitHub Discussion is used for questions and high-level discussion, while the Gitter/Matrix chat room is used to discuss less complex topics. These communities provide essential resources and support.

MkDocs is a fast, simple and downright gorgeous static site generator that’s geared towards building project documentation. Documentation source files are written in Markdown, and configured with a single YAML configuration file.

MkDocs is a popular static site generator designed explicitly for building project documentation. Its minimalist approach, flexibility, and ease of use have made it a favorite among developers and ideal for non-technical users.

If you turn Javascript off, the Markdown-formatted text will not display as a clickable link, but like "[hugo](https://gohugo.io/)". You would need to copy and paste the link into a browser address bar to navigate there instead of just clicking the link.

Static sites are a thing of beauty and simplicity. They're fast, secure, and easy to manage. The JAMStack movement help made it popular (after SPAs) and static site builders like Hugo and Eleventy are making it simple to build websites in this manner. I dare not mention Astro because it's the new kid making building static sites cooler than ever.

I used Hugo to convert markdown to html as with this it was very easy to do as I just did installed Hugo locally created a project added a pre-build theme and just copy-paste markdown files to content folder inside Hugo project that's it. Quickly pushed code to GitHub wrote a simple GitHub Workflow to deploy Hugo Site on GitHub Pages and That's it.

Like some other commenters here who started with Bootstrap/jQuery/etc., I feel stuck in the stone ages at times. My most recent content-based site uses Hugo (https://gohugo.io/), but I'm starting to tire of the magic and gotchas I keep running into.

Can someone that has used Astro and an older static site generator framework explain the pros/cons of Astro in that context?

I decided to go with Hugo to build my personal website. The only thing I based my choice on was the build time. I thought Hugo was in the same league as Astro when it comes to content management perks, but it isn't quite there yet. Or, I can say it has its own path since it's older than most of the other static site generators I've encountered. Moreover, it's a Go application, which is another important factor to consider when evaluating technology choices.

Hugo got a WASM based plugin system, but real scripting plugins that would be needed for SQLite are still a feature request: https://github.com/gohugoio/hugo/issues/5510

https://gohugo.io/

It's written in go but what's great about it, unlike many competitors written in Javascript or Python, is that it is just a simple binary you download and run, you do not need to get a PhD in the go build system to start a web site also it is crazy fast. It can publish a site to something like S3 or Azure Storage behind a CDN and you do not have to worry about anything other than paying the storage and bandwidth bills.

Myself I've been procrastinating on getting myself a blog and my take is Hugo is not customizable enough for me without learning a lot of Go, so I have looked at are either Python-based or oriented towards scientific publishing oriented systems such as

https://getpelican.com/

https://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/master/

https://quarto.org/

(I want to write stuff like https://ontology2.com/essays/PropertiesColorsAndThumbnails.h...)

I've given this list to people in your shoes and they usually react with information overload

https://jamstack.org/generators/

part of that is that there are 355 generators (there have to be some good ones in there somewhere) but it also uses the kind of miscommunication patterns we're used to in webtech where, for instance, you'd think they are pushing Javascript down your throat (the "J" stands for Javascript but the generators I've mentioned generate mostly HTML with just a little Javascript.)

Pick something simple and run with it, if I did that 2 years ago I'd be blogging now.

I'm satisfied with Hugo: https://gohugo.io/ It is very fast and has a lot of features. The syntax highlighting for code looks also very good.

For my personal site, I use Hugo, and I host the markdown files on GitHub. Publishing is done whenever I push to the repository using Netlify.