I am currently using Hugo as a static site generator for my blog. It’s not bad but rather limited. Does anybody know about something that would be equally as lightweight but offer some more flexibility. I just don’t know what is out there so anything you guys could come up with would be appreciated.
What do you find limited about Hugo?
The only limiting factor is really that if I am, say, in a public place that bans SSH access or SFTP access. I am starting to see more of this as deep packet inspection becomes available to the masses now. I could be composing my blog post on my laptop but be unable to otherwise publish it if I am on such a network that combines deep packet inspection with locking down ports.
You could also have your back end pull from a git repo every minute. A cron job could check a GitLab repo for changes and update the site if any changes are found.
That is a networking issue which is not specific to Hugo. You need to solve this as most of the suggestions also involve SSH.
One way is to use a VPN like openvpn or wireguard that can use a common port like 80 or 443.
No, of course it is not specific to Hugo. Solid point on OpenVPN because I forgot it can use TCP. However, does OpenVPN’s negotiation look like a TLS handshake from a browser to a client? Again, deep packet inspection is my enemy here.
Deep packet inspection is unlikely the culprit in my experience. SSH and SFTP use port 22 by default which is probably blocked. I log in to my work VPN through common ports 80 and 443 on public WiFi.
Actually, you’re mistaken because I’ve set SSH and SFTP to use the port for IMAPS which is 993. I know that Dunkin Donuts, for example, offers guest WiFi. They have port 993 open because I can send and receive email from my phone. My email provider is Hostinger for reference. However, when I try to SSH into my server over the 993 port it fails when it should not. I have verified that 993 is not firewalled and that the SSH daemon is listening for connections on port 993. What else could it be other than a firewall analyzing the TCP handshake and seeing that it is not email, http, or https traffic? If I am wrong please educate me.
DD might be using something like that. I have heard they block TOR as well. I have used a VPN with ports 80 and 443 on their WiFi years ago.
Just in case I am wrong, the next time I go to Dunkin’, I am going to see if I can use OpenVPN on port 80.
Docusaurus is very simple although less customizable. I really like Astro as it is fast and very flexible
Jekyll is great with a bunch of narrow tailored plugins to add only functionality you need. You can self host or use GitHub Pages (they only allow approved list of plugins).
I found this article questioning the future of Jekyll. It says one of the maintainers of Jekyll suggested 11ty as an alternative.
I have zero experience with either, tough; YMMV.
It’s still being developed 🤷 and as it’s an open-source project it can always be forked if the maintainers decide to stop.
I recall eleventy being pretty good.
I had one issue with it, re how it generated links, that didn’t match how I needed it to in order to migrate my site, which was a dealbreaker for me. But other than that, it was solid.
I despise jekyll, purely from the standpoint of the state of their documentation.
There was another, that was extremely lightweight and configurable, at the cost of requiring much configuration - I think it was called “metal” - if I can find it I’ll report back
Edit: Hexo and Metalsmith. Hexo scratches my javascript itch; metalsmith is extremely versatile - it’s more of an erector set than a finished thing.
Thank you! I’ll check out Eleventy. I also recently learned about Publii which might be a possibility.
There’s a big filterable list here: https://staticgen.com/
I’ve been using Pelican for a few years. It’s reasonably lightweight and very flexible, although the configuration could be prettier.
My blog is hosted on GitHub pages and it supports Jekyll. I use the MinimalMistakes template.
That’s a pretty good idea but I still want to keep doing the self-hosted thing. Nevertheless, it is lightweight and flexible.
