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  1. Stackups
  2. Application & Data
  3. Frameworks
  4. Static Site Generators
  5. Hugo vs React-Static

Hugo vs React-Static

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Hugo
Hugo
Stacks1.3K
Followers1.2K
Votes206
React-Static
React-Static
Stacks46
Followers114
Votes3

Hugo vs React-Static: What are the differences?

Introduction: Hugo and React-Static are both popular static site generators used for building websites. While they have similar features, there are some key differences between the two.

  1. Programming Language: One major difference between Hugo and React-Static is the programming language used. Hugo is written in Go, a statically typed language, whereas React-Static is built with React, a JavaScript library for building user interfaces. This difference in programming language affects the development process and the skills required to work with each platform.

  2. Build Process: Another difference lies in the build process of both platforms. Hugo uses a build process that generates a complete static website with every change, making it faster to deploy updates. On the other hand, React-Static uses a more traditional build process that only generates the static files once, which can make the development process faster but may require manual re-building after updates.

  3. Development Experience: Hugo provides a seamless development experience as it has a built-in live-reloading server that instantly updates changes without the need to refresh the browser. React-Static, on the other hand, requires a separate development server to preview changes, which may introduce some additional setup and configuration steps.

  4. Theme System: Hugo offers a robust theme system that allows users to easily customize the appearance of their website using pre-built themes or by creating their own. React-Static, on the other hand, does not have a built-in theme system and requires users to design and style their website manually using React components and CSS.

  5. JavaScript Support: React-Static, being built with React, provides extensive support for JavaScript libraries and frameworks, allowing users to leverage the full power of the React ecosystem. Hugo, on the other hand, has limited JavaScript support and is primarily focused on generating static HTML files, making it less suitable for complex JavaScript-driven web applications.

  6. Community and Ecosystem: Both Hugo and React-Static have their own active communities and ecosystems. However, React-Static benefits from the larger React community, which provides a vast array of libraries, tools, and resources that can be leveraged when building websites. Hugo, on the other hand, has a smaller community but offers a wide range of pre-built themes and plugins specifically tailored for the platform.

In Summary, Hugo and React-Static differ in their programming language, build process, development experience, theme system, JavaScript support, and community ecosystem. Each platform has its own strengths and weaknesses, and the choice between the two ultimately depends on the specific requirements and preferences of the project at hand.

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Advice on Hugo, React-Static

Axel
Axel

Apr 2, 2021

Review

Me and a lot of colleagues have done documentation collaboratively with https://hackmd.io/ which also comes as an open source fork as https://hedgedoc.org/. The first has commenting function, the latter hasn't. Both make it easy to do doc sprints synchronously which means everybody is on the phone at the same time and write down documentation. As you do this with Markdown you can use your writing with https://squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-material/ e.g. which is a static site generator running on Python and build beautiful documentation from Markdown files. If you want to build with https://gohugo.io/ I recommend https://www.docsy.dev/ theme.

We do scholarly writing and documentation with GitLab which we host on-premise. GitHub and GitLab come with sophisticated workflows for commenting and quality assurance if you learn to branch and merge which is for a lot of folks a steep learning curve. To onboard colleagues I recommend starting with HedgeDoc first and then migrate to more advanced workflows with Git(Lab|Hub).

22k views22k
Comments
Joseph
Joseph

Apr 2, 2021

Needs adviceonGatsbyGatsbyGolangGolang

Hi everyone, I'm trying to decide which front-end tool, that will likely use server-side rendering (SSR), in hopes it'll be faster. The end-user will upload a document and they see text output on their screen (like SaaS or microservice). I read that Gatsby can also do SSR. Also want to add a headless CMS that is easy to use.

Backend is in Golang. Open to ideas. Thank you.

59.3k views59.3k
Comments
Manuel
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

Detailed Comparison

Hugo
Hugo
React-Static
React-Static

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.

React-Static is a next-gen static site generator for React. Finally, you can build a website like you do any other React App. There's no special CMS, query language, or crazy lifecycle hooks. Just good old React producing an amazing SEO-ready, user experience driven, progressively enhanced website. The effort is minimal, but the benefits are not!

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.
React. Enough said;Blazing fast performance;Data Agnostic. Feed your site data from anywhere, however you want;Built for SEO, by SEO professionals;React-first developer experience;Painless project setup & migration;Supports 99.9% of the React ecosystem. Including CSS-in-JS libraries, custom Query layers like GraphQL, and even Redux!;Aggressive and flexible reloading
Statistics
Stacks
1.3K
Stacks
46
Followers
1.2K
Followers
114
Votes
206
Votes
3
Pros & Cons
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
Pros
  • 2
    GraphQL
  • 1
    All the benefits of a static website + React+GraphQL
Cons
  • 1
    GraphQL
Integrations
Markdown
Markdown
Golang
Golang
React
React

What are some alternatives to Hugo, React-Static?

Jekyll

Jekyll

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.

Gatsby

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

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

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

Gridsome

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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