Hugo vs Middleman

Overview

Middleman

Stacks170

Followers192

Votes66

GitHub Stars7.1K

Forks757

Hugo

Stacks1.3K

Followers1.2K

Votes206

Hugo vs Middleman: What are the differences?

Introduction

In this Markdown code, we will discuss the key differences between Hugo and Middleman, which are two popular static site generators used for building websites.

File Structure and Organization: One notable difference between Hugo and Middleman is their file structure and organization. Hugo follows a flat file structure, where all content files are stored in a single directory with different front matter to differentiate them. On the other hand, Middleman follows a nested file structure, where content files are organized in multiple directories and subdirectories based on their categories, making it easier to manage larger websites with complex content structures.
Performance and Speed: Another significant difference between Hugo and Middleman lies in their performance and speed. Hugo is known for its exceptional speed as it uses Go programming language, which compiles templates into static pages very quickly. Middleman, built on Ruby, is also fast but relatively slower compared to Hugo due to the nature of the language and the way it processes templates.
Template Engine: The template engines used by Hugo and Middleman also differ. Hugo utilizes its own fast and efficient template engine called Go templates, which provides a wide range of built-in functionalities for generating dynamic content. Middleman, on the other hand, uses the popular ERB (Embedded Ruby) template engine, which is widely supported and has a large community of developers, making it easier to find resources and support.
Ease of Use: When it comes to ease of use and simplicity, Hugo and Middleman offer distinct experiences. Hugo aims to provide a user-friendly and beginner-friendly interface, with a straightforward setup and minimal configuration required to get started. Middleman, on the other hand, offers a rich set of features and more customization options, making it suitable for developers who prefer fine-grained control over their website's structure and functionality.
Themes and Extensions: Both Hugo and Middleman support themes and extensions, allowing users to easily customize the appearance and functionality of their websites. However, the availability and variety of themes and extensions may differ between the two generators. Hugo has a vast collection of high-quality themes and a strong community that actively contributes to its theme repository. Middleman also has a decent collection of themes and extensions available but may not be as extensive as Hugo's.
Community and Support: Lastly, the community and support surrounding Hugo and Middleman vary. Hugo has gained significant popularity in recent years, resulting in a large and active community that provides extensive documentation, tutorials, and support forums. Middleman, while also having a supportive community, may not be as widely adopted as Hugo, resulting in a relatively smaller user base and available resources.

In Summary, Hugo and Middleman differ in terms of file structure and organization, performance and speed, template engine, ease of use, availability of themes and extensions, as well as community and support.

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CLI (Node.js)

Manual

Advice on Middleman, Hugo

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

Apr 2, 2021

Needs adviceon

Gatsby

Golang

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

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

Middleman	Hugo
Middleman is a command-line tool for creating static websites using all the shortcuts and tools of the modern web development environment.	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.
Sass for DRY stylesheets;CoffeeScript for safer and less verbose javascript;Multiple asset management solutions, including Sprockets;ERb & Haml for dynamic pages and simplified HTML syntax	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.
Statistics
GitHub Stars 7.1K	GitHub Stars -
GitHub Forks 757	GitHub Forks -
Stacks 170	Stacks 1.3K
Followers 192	Followers 1.2K
Votes 66	Votes 206
Pros & Cons
Pros 20 Rails for static sites 18 Erb, haml, slim 17 Live reload 7 Easy setup 3 Emacs org-mode integration by middleman-org	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
Integrations
No integrations available	Markdown Golang

What are some alternatives to Middleman, Hugo?

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 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 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.

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 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.

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.

VuePress

A minimalistic static site generator with a Vue-powered theming system, and a default theme optimized for writing technical documentation. It was created to support the documentation needs of Vue's own sub projects.

Related Comparisons

Hugo vs Middleman: What are the differences?

Introduction

In this Markdown code, we will discuss the key differences between Hugo and Middleman, which are two popular static site generators used for building websites.

File Structure and Organization: One notable difference between Hugo and Middleman is their file structure and organization. Hugo follows a flat file structure, where all content files are stored in a single directory with different front matter to differentiate them. On the other hand, Middleman follows a nested file structure, where content files are organized in multiple directories and subdirectories based on their categories, making it easier to manage larger websites with complex content structures.
Performance and Speed: Another significant difference between Hugo and Middleman lies in their performance and speed. Hugo is known for its exceptional speed as it uses Go programming language, which compiles templates into static pages very quickly. Middleman, built on Ruby, is also fast but relatively slower compared to Hugo due to the nature of the language and the way it processes templates.
Template Engine: The template engines used by Hugo and Middleman also differ. Hugo utilizes its own fast and efficient template engine called Go templates, which provides a wide range of built-in functionalities for generating dynamic content. Middleman, on the other hand, uses the popular ERB (Embedded Ruby) template engine, which is widely supported and has a large community of developers, making it easier to find resources and support.
Ease of Use: When it comes to ease of use and simplicity, Hugo and Middleman offer distinct experiences. Hugo aims to provide a user-friendly and beginner-friendly interface, with a straightforward setup and minimal configuration required to get started. Middleman, on the other hand, offers a rich set of features and more customization options, making it suitable for developers who prefer fine-grained control over their website's structure and functionality.
Themes and Extensions: Both Hugo and Middleman support themes and extensions, allowing users to easily customize the appearance and functionality of their websites. However, the availability and variety of themes and extensions may differ between the two generators. Hugo has a vast collection of high-quality themes and a strong community that actively contributes to its theme repository. Middleman also has a decent collection of themes and extensions available but may not be as extensive as Hugo's.
Community and Support: Lastly, the community and support surrounding Hugo and Middleman vary. Hugo has gained significant popularity in recent years, resulting in a large and active community that provides extensive documentation, tutorials, and support forums. Middleman, while also having a supportive community, may not be as widely adopted as Hugo, resulting in a relatively smaller user base and available resources.

Hugo vs Middleman

Overview

Hugo vs Middleman: What are the differences?