Static Site Generator (SSG) as a Free Squarespace Alternative?
When I was looking into wiki/documentation site options, I found *Static Site Generators* (SSG), which create static websites that are *free to host* with netlify, github pages, Cloudflare pages, etc. They have templates and features built-in so you can often just create some markdown files and they're quickly transformed into a beautiful, fast, secure, free website. You often don't need technical knowledge/expertise, but you can customize them further if you have that.
https://jamstack.org/generators/ has a list of them. *MKDocs Material theme* is pretty elaborate and popular for hosting *documentation/wikis*. If you compare it to bookstackapp.com for example, *bookstack* requires paid hosting since it's not static, and requires much more technical expertise to get running and to customize. I find MKdocs Material to be pretty user/noob-friendly, with good documentation and easy customization. Other SSGs can require a lot more technical knowledge or be less easily-customizable.
But MKDocs Material doesn't seem great for a general business website. After learning about SSGs I realized that my Squarespace site is all static content and should be replaceable with an SSG. I've been *trying to find an SSG that's as good for general sites as MKDocs Material is for wikis*.
# Comparisons:
- https://medium.com/@nampara17/whats-the-best-cms-for-static-websites-12364ab911ef
- https://teleporthq.io/blog/popular-static-site-generators
- https://tiiny.host/blog/10-best-cms-static-sites/
- https://www.sitepoint.com/community/t/static-site-generators-a-beginners-guide/321745
*Hugo, Gatsby, Eleventy (11ty), and Astro* are the main ones I see recommended for noobies. They all have themes or "starter projects" you can use as templates. The difficulty is finding a theme/template that's as good for a regular website as MKDocs Material is for documentation/wikis.
For example Jekyll has tons -- https://jekyllrb.com/docs/themes/, and it would be difficult to browse through and test all of them. I happened to come across this one -- https://mmistakes.github.io/minimal-mistakes/about/ -- which looks quite good for both documentation and general sites, but the search cannot find links (_which is important for my documentation site_).
I found a Hugo theme that seemed good but the dev wasn't active on github and people were having unanswered problems.
*Middleman* is another SSG that sounds good, but their theme page doesn't have any pictures or quick links to demo sites, so it would be even more difficult to check them all out.
And looking into them more, I'm told that *Astro* requires javascript, CSS, and html knowledge. *Eleventy* (11ty) also requires JS and HTML coding. And *Gatsby* doesn't look that simple either https://www.sitepoint.com/gatsby-guide/.
*Publii* (static site CMS) was recommended as noob-friendly but it's extremely limited. I didn't like it at all.
*TeleportHQ* is MUCH better than Publii, but it's not intuitive or easy enough to use to be a good replacement for Squarespace IMO.
*Plasmic, Webflow, and Couch CMS* seem to be similar options.
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Oh wow, there's no formatting...