Ask HN: Best Node.js static blog generator? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Best Node.js static blog generator?

15 pointsdiegorbaquero16 comments

I'm interested in the various views for the best NodeJS static blog generator.

Which is the best?

Why are you giving your recommendation?

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I'm using metalsmith [1]. It's quite "Do it yourself", but very flexible on the result.

1: http://metalsmith.io

I second this!

It's nice because simple, but the quality of the plugins and the documentation is not very good. You end up wasting a bit of time discovering how to do even simple stuff.

The nice thing is that you can easily knock together a plugin to do what you need

> The nice thing is that you can easily knock together a plugin to do what you need

Precisely. I guess one of the reasons why metalsmith doesn't have any pre-installed plugins is that. Fortunately with a combination of metalsmith & gulp you can do wonders and it's quite flexible, compared to any other `blackbox`-utility on the market.

I am also looking into this space and found https://www.staticgen.com/ quite helpful.

You can filter by language and then, you get Hexo, GitBook and Gatsby as the front runners for Javscript ranked by Github stars.

Nice site! Has really helped me know what the "market" looks like. Thanks for sharing

Does it have to be node.js? Are you looking to expand your JS skills, or do you just want a decent static site generator? (If B, then hugo is awesome, and awesome fast)

If that is the case why not use Jekyll? It is the most popular thing out there that I am aware of.

I want to be able to understand and modify if needed. Although I do program in other languages, I want to focus in NodeJS for now.

Just pick the most popular one. The differences will be minor enough that what matters is documentation and support.

Try Gatsby. Pretty full featured and works well. Also very easy to get up and running quickly.

While Gatsby looks good, I remember that the last time I looked at it Gatsby was always loading all blog posts. This isn't a problem for a small blog but with a blog with hundreds of posts this wouldn't be efficient. Plus there are some SEO issues because of its SPA nature. Are this issues still valid or did Gatsby changed in these regards?

It's not SPA, it's static. You can load without any JS on the frontend if you want I believe.

Code splitting is an expected part of an upcoming 1.0 release I believe (may be misremembering)

Hexo is by far the most popular. Easy to use, lot of themes, I really like it.

Yeah hexo is pretty good

Try phronomic.io, the front end use react.

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