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

Cactus vs Hugo

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Hugo
Hugo
Stacks1.3K
Followers1.2K
Votes206
Cactus
Cactus
Stacks6
Followers21
Votes4

Cactus vs Hugo: What are the differences?

**Introduction:**

**1. Performance:** Hugo is known for its incredibly fast build times, making it a suitable choice for large websites or blogs with complex structures. On the other hand, Cactus may take longer to generate a website due to its slower build times.

**2. Themes and Templates:** Hugo offers a wide range of themes and templates that can be easily customized to fit your website's needs. Cactus, on the other hand, may have fewer options and may require more manual customization.

**3. Content Organization:** Hugo uses a content organization system inspired by static site generators, resulting in a more structured and organized way to manage content. Cactus may not have as advanced a content organization system, making Hugo a better choice for projects with a lot of content.

**4. Active Development:** Hugo has a large and active community of developers, resulting in frequent updates and improvements to the platform. Cactus, on the other hand, may not receive updates as regularly, potentially leading to compatibility issues or security vulnerabilities.

**5. Ease of Use:** Hugo is often praised for its user-friendly design and intuitive commands, making it easier for users to get started with the platform. Cactus, while relatively straightforward, may require a steeper learning curve for beginners.

**6. Extensibility:** Hugo offers a robust system for extending its functionality through various plugins and integrations, allowing users to add features or optimize their websites as needed. Cactus may have limitations in terms of extensibility, making Hugo a more flexible option for developers looking to expand their websites' capabilities.

In Summary, Hugo and Cactus have key differences in performance, themes, content organization, development activity, ease of use, and extensibility that should be considered when choosing a static site generator for your project.

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Advice on Hugo, Cactus

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
Cactus
Cactus

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.

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.

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.
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
Stacks
1.3K
Stacks
6
Followers
1.2K
Followers
21
Votes
206
Votes
4
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
    Mac app
  • 1
    Django templates
  • 1
    One-click S3 integration
Integrations
Markdown
Markdown
Golang
Golang
Amazon S3
Amazon S3

What are some alternatives to Hugo, 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.

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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