Gatsby vs MkDocs

Overview

MkDocs

Stacks167

Followers152

Votes14

Gatsby

Stacks3.3K

Followers2.4K

Votes121

GitHub Stars55.9K

Forks10.3K

Gatsby vs MkDocs: What are the differences?

# Introduction

Key differences between Gatsby and MkDocs:

1. **Architecture**: Gatsby is a React-based static site generator that uses GraphQL to pull data from different sources, while MkDocs is a static site generator focused on creating project documentation using Markdown files.

2. **Themes and Templates**: Gatsby offers a wide range of themes and templates that can be customized for building various types of websites, whereas MkDocs provides a more simplistic and straightforward approach with limited theme options specifically tailored for documentation.

3. **Plugin Ecosystem**: Gatsby has a robust plugin ecosystem that allows developers to extend and enhance the functionality of their websites, while MkDocs generally relies on a smaller set of plugins mainly focused on documentation features.

4. **Performance**: Gatsby is optimized for performance, providing features like code splitting, lazy loading, and image optimization out of the box, resulting in faster websites. MkDocs, on the other hand, is efficient for generating documentation but may not offer the same level of performance optimization.

5. **Community and Support**: Gatsby has a large and active community that continually contributes to the development and improvement of the platform, offering extensive resources and documentation. MkDocs, while widely used for documentation projects, may have a smaller community and fewer resources available for support and customization.

6. **Learning Curve**: Gatsby's use of React and GraphQL might present a steeper learning curve compared to MkDocs, which relies on Markdown files and a simpler configuration setup, making it easier for beginners to start building documentation websites quickly.

In Summary, Gatsby and MkDocs differ in their architecture, themes and templates, plugin ecosystem, performance optimization, community and support, and learning curve for developers.

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CLI (Node.js)

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Advice on MkDocs, Gatsby

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.

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Detailed Comparison

MkDocs	Gatsby
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.	Gatsby lets you build blazing fast sites with your data, whatever the source. Liberate your sites from legacy CMSs and fly into the future.
Statistics
GitHub Stars -	GitHub Stars 55.9K
GitHub Forks -	GitHub Forks 10.3K
Stacks 167	Stacks 3.3K
Followers 152	Followers 2.4K
Votes 14	Votes 121
Pros & Cons
Pros 5 Speed 4 Gitlab integration 3 Extensibility 2 Themes Cons 1 Build time increases exponentially as site grows	Pros 28 Generated websites are super fast 16 Fast 15 GraphQL 10 Progressive Web Apps generation 9 Reusable components (React) Cons 7 No ssr 4 Documentation isn't complete. 3 Very slow builds 2 Flash of unstyled content issues 2 For-profit
Integrations
No integrations available	WordPress TypeScript GraphCMS Babel prismic.io AWS Amplify Glamorous Prisma styled-components Emotion

What are some alternatives to MkDocs, Gatsby?

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 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.

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

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.

Sphinx

It lets you either batch index and search data stored in an SQL database, NoSQL storage, or just files quickly and easily — or index and search data on the fly, working with it pretty much as with a database server.

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

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

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

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.

Related Comparisons

Gatsby vs MkDocs: What are the differences?

# Introduction

Key differences between Gatsby and MkDocs:

1. **Architecture**: Gatsby is a React-based static site generator that uses GraphQL to pull data from different sources, while MkDocs is a static site generator focused on creating project documentation using Markdown files.

2. **Themes and Templates**: Gatsby offers a wide range of themes and templates that can be customized for building various types of websites, whereas MkDocs provides a more simplistic and straightforward approach with limited theme options specifically tailored for documentation.

3. **Plugin Ecosystem**: Gatsby has a robust plugin ecosystem that allows developers to extend and enhance the functionality of their websites, while MkDocs generally relies on a smaller set of plugins mainly focused on documentation features.

4. **Performance**: Gatsby is optimized for performance, providing features like code splitting, lazy loading, and image optimization out of the box, resulting in faster websites. MkDocs, on the other hand, is efficient for generating documentation but may not offer the same level of performance optimization.

5. **Community and Support**: Gatsby has a large and active community that continually contributes to the development and improvement of the platform, offering extensive resources and documentation. MkDocs, while widely used for documentation projects, may have a smaller community and fewer resources available for support and customization.

6. **Learning Curve**: Gatsby's use of React and GraphQL might present a steeper learning curve compared to MkDocs, which relies on Markdown files and a simpler configuration setup, making it easier for beginners to start building documentation websites quickly.

In Summary, Gatsby and MkDocs differ in their architecture, themes and templates, plugin ecosystem, performance optimization, community and support, and learning curve for developers.

Gatsby vs MkDocs

Overview