We explore the best top static site generation tools – ideal if you need to build loads of websites in a hurry.
It takes a long time and lots of expertise to build and update a website – and loads of people just don’t have either of those resources available. If you fall into that camp, then it’s worth considering a static site generator. A top-quality static site generator can take your customized website templates, combine those with content drawn from several sources, and then create and publish pages within seconds – so you can quickly generate new pages and create new content without having to rely on complicated CMS systems or coding anything from scratch. The best static site generators churn out high-quality pages with speed and precision, and they’re able to support hundreds of different templates, plugins, and themes – and they can grab content from loads of different places. We’ve gathered eight of the best right here, so you’re sure to find the right product for your site. You don’t have to stop there if you need some web-design help: check out our picks of the best website builders right here. Hugo claims to be the fastest static site generator on the web, and we can’t argue with the figures – this product boasts a site generation time of less than 1ms per page. There’s plenty to like elsewhere, too. Hugo includes more than 300 themes, so you’ll be able to find the perfect look for your site, and it also ships with templates that can handle common site-building tasks, like SEO optimization, enabling comments, and adding analytics. Hugo’s slick design pairs with impressive flexibility. This product supports unlimited content types, and it works in multiple languages. And if you want to get technical, you can use markdown syntax, shortcodes, and multiple output formats. You can also upload Hugo-built sites to any host. Hugo is open source, so it works on every big platform – and it’s completely free. Start here if you need a fast, intuitive site generator and don’t want to spend any cash. Pelican is another free, open-source static site generator, and it uses the Python programming language and Jinja for templating and themes. That’s a great start: Python is popular, and Jinja has high-tech templates for virtually every situation. Pelican enables users to create content in reStructuredText or Markdown, its static output can be hosted anywhere, and it can publish content in multiple languages. It supports Atom and RSS feeds, and it can also import content from WordPress, RSS feeds and other services – so you can use content from existing sources to generate new pages. The modular plugin system enables hundreds of extra features for your sites, too. This is another great free option, but be aware that it’s only suitable if you’re already familiar with Python. Lots of static site generators are daunting if you don’t have a technical background, but Eleventy tries to buck the trend with an emphasis on simplicity.
