2021 February, 1
This article highlights the top OpenSource Projects providing static site generators (SSG) in many different programming languages. You’ll find Jekyll one of them. Look at the top open-source SSGs if a full-blown CMS is needed for your project.
Dynamic page access
A typical CMS-driven website works by building each and every page dynamically. That means fetching the content from a database to pass them over to a template system (engine) to load the page content, adding the required structure information (e.g., CSS styles) and Javascript components if needed. This means every page is assembled on demand.
Web Browser
Web Server
Rendering Engine (e.g. PHP-based)
Database (e.g. MySQL, Postgres)
Static content (Images, Videos, JS- and CSS files) and Caches
Is a CMS needed?
For many websites, dynamic page generation is entirely unnecessary and adds unwanted risks in terms of complexity, performance losses, and security issues. After all, the content of most websites changes, when the content authors make changes. Why the hell should a web page always assemble on demand if there are no changes?
| To be fair, most CMS are providing caching systems for web pages to prevent unnecessary creation processes. It is not easy to implement such a caching strategy, and in the very end, it adds the next level of complexity. |
A Static Site Generator takes a different approach and generates all the pages of the website upfront. That does not necessarily mean that a static website is always built from scratch. Modern generators support a so-called incremental build, as does. When there are changes detected to the content, only selected pages will rebuild.
Web Browser
Web Server
Server-side rendered (prepared) static content
Statically build web pages
Overall, statically build web pages having no moving parts in the deployed website. This results in browser-side caching only, the performance goes up, and static sites are far more secure because they build already. To find out what OpenSource Static Site Generators are available today and their ranking in terms of popularity, go for Jamstack. You’ll find a comprehensive list of static site generators used today.
Check popular static site generators at Jamstack!
