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  1. Stackups
  2. Application & Data
  3. Frameworks
  4. Static Site Generators
  5. Assemble vs Cactus

Assemble vs Cactus

OverviewComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Assemble
Assemble
Stacks32
Followers26
Votes0
GitHub Stars4.3K
Forks276
Cactus
Cactus
Stacks6
Followers21
Votes4

Assemble vs Cactus: What are the differences?

What is Assemble? The static site generator for Node.js, Grunt.js and Yeoman. Most popular site generator for Grunt.js and Yeoman. Assemble is used to build hundreds of web projects, ranging in size from a single page to 14,000 pages (that we're aware of!).

What is Cactus? Static site generator for designers. Uses Python and Django templates. Cactus makes setting up a website look easy. Choose a template for a blog, portfolio or single page and Cactus generates all files and folders to get you on your way.

Assemble and Cactus can be categorized as "Static Site Generators" tools.

Some of the features offered by Assemble are:

  • Allows you to carve your HTML up into reusable fragments: partials, includes, sections, snippets... Whatever you prefer to call them, Assemble does that.
  • Optionally use layouts to wrap your pages with commonly used elements and content.
  • "Pages" can either be defined as HTML/templates, JSON or YAML, or directly inside the Gruntfile.

On the other hand, Cactus provides the following key features:

  • Mac App
  • Focus on editing - Under the hood, Cactus runs a small local web server for each website you're working on. This makes it possible to build your website locally, using modern web technologies, and have the results generated to a collection of flat files.
  • Live preview anywhere - Cactus monitors all changes you make to your files and automatically refreshes your browser. Preview your project on mobile devices, and they'll instantly refresh too.

Assemble and Cactus are both open source tools. Assemble with 3.7K GitHub stars and 256 forks on GitHub appears to be more popular than Cactus with 3.29K GitHub stars and 316 GitHub forks.

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Detailed Comparison

Assemble
Assemble
Cactus
Cactus

Most popular site generator for Grunt.js and Yeoman. Assemble is used to build hundreds of web projects, ranging in size from a single page to 14,000 pages (that we're aware of!).

Cactus makes setting up a website look easy. Choose a template for a blog, portfolio or single page and Cactus generates all files and folders to get you on your way.

Allows you to carve your HTML up into reusable fragments: partials, includes, sections, snippets... Whatever you prefer to call them, Assemble does that.;Optionally use layouts to wrap your pages with commonly used elements and content.;"Pages" can either be defined as HTML/templates, JSON or YAML, or directly inside the Gruntfile.;
Mac App; Focus on editing - Under the hood, Cactus runs a small local web server for each website you're working on. This makes it possible to build your website locally, using modern web technologies, and have the results generated to a collection of flat files.;Live preview anywhere - Cactus monitors all changes you make to your files and automatically refreshes your browser. Preview your project on mobile devices, and they'll instantly refresh too.;Deploy with confidence - Cactus uses Amazon S3 for fast, reliable and inexpensive hosting, so you can get your projects on the web faster.
Statistics
GitHub Stars
4.3K
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Forks
276
GitHub Forks
-
Stacks
32
Stacks
6
Followers
26
Followers
21
Votes
0
Votes
4
Pros & Cons
No community feedback yet
Pros
  • 2
    Mac app
  • 1
    One-click S3 integration
  • 1
    Django templates
Integrations
No integrations available
Amazon S3
Amazon S3

What are some alternatives to Assemble, Cactus?

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.

Hugo

Hugo

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.

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.

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