Website Tool Recommendations

infinitymdm

Hi folks,

This is way off topic, but I'm looking for some recommendations for static site generators and website styling libraries. I've been talking for years about starting up a little dev blog, and I'd like to actually make good on all that talk. Maybe it's sunk-cost fallacy, but after paying for a domain for so long I'd like to actually use it 😄

I don't need much; just something that can host static content (text & images). I'll probably use Github Pages (or something similar) for the backend hosting, and just point my domain there.

In the past I've used Django and 11ty. Django seems really overkill for a simple blog. 11ty is probably closer to what I'm after, but I'm wondering if there are better options these days as web changes fast. As far as CSS goes, I've used both Bootstrap and Halfmoon UI.

What web frameworks & styling tools would you recommend?

davidjharder

In the world of static generators, hugo is among the most commonly used. Solus has a hugo package. You have to choose a theme which can be daunting with all the options. Plus, how themes expect to be installed and configured can vary a lot.

Other generators I have tried:
Jekyll - Ruby based, I have very little experience on this one
Zola - like hugo but newer and simpler, I ran my personal site on this for a while. Not many themes

Netlify, a company which started as a specialized host for these application, has a good overview actually: https://www.netlify.com/integrations/frameworks/

There are also some services that will help you set up a dead-simple blog, like Bear Blog

codewizard1975

I second the recommendation for Hugo. Used it in the past and it worked great.

infinitymdm

I'll definitely take a look at Hugo. It seems to be a lot like 11ty, but with a few more nice-to-have features and a simpler interface.