Hugo vs VuePress

Overview

Hugo

Stacks1.3K

Followers1.2K

Votes206

VuePress

Stacks388

Followers418

Votes8

GitHub Stars22.8K

Forks4.7K

Hugo vs VuePress: What are the differences?

Introduction

Hugo and VuePress are both static site generators commonly used for building websites. While they share similarities in their purpose of generating static websites, there are key differences that set them apart.

Flexibility and Customization: One key difference between Hugo and VuePress is the level of flexibility and customization they offer. Hugo, being a general-purpose static site generator, provides more flexibility in terms of themes, templates, and content structure. This allows developers to create highly customized websites tailored to their specific needs. On the other hand, VuePress, being a framework built on top of Vue.js, is more focused on providing a seamless and opinionated experience for creating documentation sites. Although VuePress allows customization to some extent, it may require more effort and expertise compared to Hugo.
Ease of Use and Learning Curve: Another significant difference is the ease of use and learning curve associated with Hugo and VuePress. Hugo follows a simple and intuitive approach by utilizing a familiar templating language like Go's syntax. This makes it easier for developers with basic knowledge of HTML and CSS to get started with Hugo quickly. On the contrary, VuePress leverages Vue.js, a JavaScript framework, which may require developers to have a solid understanding of JavaScript and Vue.js concepts. Therefore, VuePress might have a steeper learning curve for developers who are not familiar with Vue.js.
Scalability and Performance: In terms of scalability and performance, Hugo surpasses VuePress due to its speed and efficiency. Hugo is known for its remarkable build speed, allowing it to handle large and complex websites with thousands of pages more efficiently. VuePress, although optimized for performance, may face performance challenges as the website scales due to its underlying Vue.js framework.
Content Management System (CMS) Integration: Hugo offers a wide range of options for integrating with Content Management Systems (CMS) like WordPress, Drupal, and various headless CMS platforms. This makes it easier to manage and update content through a familiar CMS interface. On the other hand, VuePress does not offer native CMS integration out of the box. However, with some additional configurations and customizations, it is possible to integrate VuePress with a CMS.
Community and Ecosystem: In terms of community and ecosystem, Hugo has a larger and more established community compared to VuePress. This leads to a broader selection of themes, plugins, and overall support from the community when using Hugo. VuePress, being a relatively newer framework, has a smaller community and ecosystem. However, it is supported by the vibrant Vue.js community, which continues to grow.
Project Type and Use Case: The choice between Hugo and VuePress greatly depends on the type of project and use case. As mentioned earlier, Hugo is a general-purpose static site generator suitable for various websites ranging from blogs to complex e-commerce platforms. On the other hand, VuePress excels in creating documentation sites, especially for projects utilizing Vue.js. Its focus on documentation-specific features, such as automatic sidebar generation and markdown syntax highlighting, makes it an excellent choice for documenting APIs, libraries, and large-scale documentation projects.

In summary, Hugo provides more flexibility, scalability, and CMS integration options, with a larger community and ecosystem. On the other hand, VuePress offers a seamless and opinionated experience for creating documentation sites, with a focus on Vue.js projects. Choosing between the two depends on the project requirements, level of customization needed, and familiarity with the underlying technologies.

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Advice on Hugo, VuePress

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

Hugo	VuePress
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.	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.
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.	Built-in markdown extensions optimized for technical documentation; Ability to leverage Vue inside markdown files; Vue-powered custom theme system; Automatic Service Worker generation; Google Analytics Integration; Multi-language support; A default theme with responsive layout, optional homepage, simple out-of-the-box header-based search, customizable navbar and sidebar, and auto-generated GitHub link and page edit links
Statistics
GitHub Stars -	GitHub Stars 22.8K
GitHub Forks -	GitHub Forks 4.7K
Stacks 1.3K	Stacks 388
Followers 1.2K	Followers 418
Votes 206	Votes 8
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 4 It's Vue 2 Built in text search feature 2 Created by the vue.js developers Cons 3 Its Vue
Integrations
Markdown Golang	Vue.js Google Analytics

What are some alternatives to Hugo, VuePress?

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.

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.

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.

Related Comparisons

Hugo vs VuePress: What are the differences?

Introduction

Flexibility and Customization: One key difference between Hugo and VuePress is the level of flexibility and customization they offer. Hugo, being a general-purpose static site generator, provides more flexibility in terms of themes, templates, and content structure. This allows developers to create highly customized websites tailored to their specific needs. On the other hand, VuePress, being a framework built on top of Vue.js, is more focused on providing a seamless and opinionated experience for creating documentation sites. Although VuePress allows customization to some extent, it may require more effort and expertise compared to Hugo.
Ease of Use and Learning Curve: Another significant difference is the ease of use and learning curve associated with Hugo and VuePress. Hugo follows a simple and intuitive approach by utilizing a familiar templating language like Go's syntax. This makes it easier for developers with basic knowledge of HTML and CSS to get started with Hugo quickly. On the contrary, VuePress leverages Vue.js, a JavaScript framework, which may require developers to have a solid understanding of JavaScript and Vue.js concepts. Therefore, VuePress might have a steeper learning curve for developers who are not familiar with Vue.js.
Scalability and Performance: In terms of scalability and performance, Hugo surpasses VuePress due to its speed and efficiency. Hugo is known for its remarkable build speed, allowing it to handle large and complex websites with thousands of pages more efficiently. VuePress, although optimized for performance, may face performance challenges as the website scales due to its underlying Vue.js framework.
Content Management System (CMS) Integration: Hugo offers a wide range of options for integrating with Content Management Systems (CMS) like WordPress, Drupal, and various headless CMS platforms. This makes it easier to manage and update content through a familiar CMS interface. On the other hand, VuePress does not offer native CMS integration out of the box. However, with some additional configurations and customizations, it is possible to integrate VuePress with a CMS.
Community and Ecosystem: In terms of community and ecosystem, Hugo has a larger and more established community compared to VuePress. This leads to a broader selection of themes, plugins, and overall support from the community when using Hugo. VuePress, being a relatively newer framework, has a smaller community and ecosystem. However, it is supported by the vibrant Vue.js community, which continues to grow.
Project Type and Use Case: The choice between Hugo and VuePress greatly depends on the type of project and use case. As mentioned earlier, Hugo is a general-purpose static site generator suitable for various websites ranging from blogs to complex e-commerce platforms. On the other hand, VuePress excels in creating documentation sites, especially for projects utilizing Vue.js. Its focus on documentation-specific features, such as automatic sidebar generation and markdown syntax highlighting, makes it an excellent choice for documenting APIs, libraries, and large-scale documentation projects.

Hugo vs VuePress

Overview