Overview

Jekyll

Stacks1.9K

Followers1.4K

Votes230

GitHub Stars51.0K

Forks10.2K

Hugo

Stacks1.3K

Followers1.2K

Votes206

CMS.js

Stacks5

Followers38

Votes0

CMS.js vs Hugo vs Jekyll: What are the differences?

Introduction:

Key differences between CMS.js, Hugo, and Jekyll are important to understand when choosing a content management system for a website.

Static vs Dynamic Sites: CMS.js is a static site generator like Hugo and Jekyll, generating HTML files that can be hosted on any server, while Hugo and Jekyll are based on dynamic site generators where content is rendered on the server-side when it's requested by a user.
Programming Language: CMS.js is written in JavaScript, making it easy for web developers familiar with JavaScript to customize the system. On the other hand, Hugo is written in Go language, and Jekyll is based on Ruby, which may require developers to learn a new language to work with these systems.
Complexity and Learning Curve: Jekyll is known for its simplicity and ease of use, making it a great option for beginners or those with limited technical knowledge. In contrast, Hugo is considered more complex and may have a steeper learning curve, while CMS.js falls somewhere in between in terms of complexity.
Template System: Jekyll uses Liquid as its templating language, which offers flexibility and power in managing content. Hugo, on the other hand, uses Go's templating system, which can be more efficient and performant for rendering pages. CMS.js, being a lightweight system, may have fewer template options compared to Hugo and Jekyll.
Community and Support: Jekyll has a large and active community, making it easier to find help, resources, and plugins for customization. Hugo's community is also growing rapidly and provides good support, while CMS.js may have a smaller community and fewer resources available for troubleshooting and development.
Performance: Hugo is known for its speed and performance, being one of the fastest static site generators available. Jekyll is also efficient but may not be as fast as Hugo. CMS.js, being lightweight, may offer good performance for smaller websites but may not be as optimized for larger, more complex projects.

In Summary, understanding these key differences between CMS.js, Hugo, and Jekyll can help in making an informed decision when selecting a content management system for a website.

Advice on Jekyll, Hugo, CMS.js

Manuel

Frontend Engineer at BI X

Jul 22, 2020

Decided

As a Frontend Developer I wanted something simple to generate static websites with technology I am familiar with. GatsbyJS was in the stack I am familiar with, does not need any other languages / package managers and allows quick content deployment in pure HTML or Markdown (what you prefer for a project). It also does not require you to understand a theming engine if you need a custom design.

178k views178k

Comments

Kazim

Founder & Developer at Devkind

May 13, 2020

Needs advice

Fastest and quickest way to do static HTML site which is extremely fast? Do you consider above tools or is there anything more quicker or better? This is just a one time one pager site for now, no backend required. I might have such projects in future, having something to get familiar with which can immediately come into action to develop would be great advise!

53.5k views53.5k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Jekyll	Hugo	CMS.js
Think of Jekyll as a file-based CMS, without all the complexity. Jekyll takes your content, renders Markdown and Liquid templates, and spits out a complete, static website ready to be served by Apache, Nginx or another web server. Jekyll is the engine behind GitHub Pages, which you can use to host sites right from your GitHub repositories.	Hugo is a static site generator written in Go. It is optimized for speed, easy use and configurability. Hugo takes a directory with content and templates and renders them into a full html website. Hugo makes use of markdown files with front matter for meta data.	CMS.js is fully client-side, Javascript site generator in the spirit of Jekyll that uses plain ol' HTML, CSS and Javascript to generate your website. CMS.js is like a file-based CMS. It takes your content, renders Markdown and delivers a complete website in Single-Page App fashion...without the aid of server-side scripting (no Node.js, PHP, Ruby, etc.).
Simple - No more databases, comment moderation, or pesky updates to install—just your content.;Static - Markdown (or Textile), Liquid, HTML & CSS go in. Static sites come out ready for deployment.;Blog-aware - Permalinks, categories, pages, posts, and custom layouts are all first-class citizens here.	Run Anywhere - Hugo is quite possibly the easiest to install software you've ever used, simply download and run. Hugo doesn't depend on administrative privileges, databases, runtimes, interpreters or external libraries. Sites built with Hugo can be deployed on S3, Github Pages, Dropbox or any web host.;Fast & Powerful - Hugo is written for speed and performance. Great care has been taken to ensure that Hugo build time is as short as possible. We're talking milliseconds to build your entire site for most setups.; Flexible - Hugo is designed to work how you do. Organize your content however you want with any URL structure. Declare your own content types. Define your own meta data in YAML, TOML or JSON.	Can serve full GitHub repos as a site; Can serve files from an Apache server as a site
Statistics
GitHub Stars 51.0K	GitHub Stars -	GitHub Stars -
GitHub Forks 10.2K	GitHub Forks -	GitHub Forks -
Stacks 1.9K	Stacks 1.3K	Stacks 5
Followers 1.4K	Followers 1.2K	Followers 38
Votes 230	Votes 206	Votes 0
Pros & Cons
Pros 74 Github pages integration 54 Open source 37 It's slick, customisable and hackerish 24 Easy to deploy 23 Straightforward cms for the hacker mindset Cons 4 Build time increases exponentially as site grows 2 Lack of developments lately 1 Og doesn't work with postings dynamically	Pros 47 Lightning fast 29 Single Executable 26 Easy setup 24 Great development community 23 Open source Cons 4 No Plugins/Extensions 2 Template syntax not friendly 1 Quick builds	No community feedback yet
Integrations
No integrations available	Markdown Golang	GitHub

What are some alternatives to Jekyll, Hugo, CMS.js?

Gatsby

Gatsby lets you build blazing fast sites with your data, whatever the source. Liberate your sites from legacy CMSs and fly into the future.

Hexo

Hexo is a fast, simple and powerful blog framework. It parses your posts with Markdown or other render engine and generates static files with the beautiful theme. All of these just take seconds.

Middleman

Middleman is a command-line tool for creating static websites using all the shortcuts and tools of the modern web development environment.

Gridsome

Build websites using latest web tech tools that developers love - Vue.js, GraphQL and Webpack. Get hot-reloading and all the power of Node.js. Gridsome makes building websites fun again.

Pelican

Pelican is a static site generator that supports Markdown and reST syntax. Write your weblog entries directly with your editor of choice (vim!) in reStructuredText or Markdown.

DocPad

Empower your website frontends with layouts, meta-data, pre-processors (markdown, jade, coffeescript, etc.), partials, skeletons, file watching, querying, and an amazing plugin system. DocPad will streamline your web development process allowing you to craft full-featured websites quicker than ever before.

Metalsmith

In Metalsmith, all of the logic is handled by plugins. You simply chain them together. Since everything is a plugin, the core library is actually just an abstraction for manipulating a directory of files.

11ty

A simpler static site generator. An alternative to Jekyll. Written in JavaScript. Transforms a directory of templates (of varying types) into HTML. Works with HTML, Markdown, Liquid, Nunjucks, Handlebars, Mustache, EJS, Haml, Pug, and JavaScript Template Literals.

MkDocs

It builds completely static HTML sites that you can host on GitHub pages, Amazon S3, or anywhere else you choose. There's a stack of good looking themes available. The built-in dev-server allows you to preview your documentation as you're writing it. It will even auto-reload and refresh your browser whenever you save your changes.

VuePress

A minimalistic static site generator with a Vue-powered theming system, and a default theme optimized for writing technical documentation. It was created to support the documentation needs of Vue's own sub projects.