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Jekyll

1.9K
1.4K
+ 1
230
Middleman

169
191
+ 1
66
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Jekyll vs Middleman: What are the differences?

What is Jekyll? Blog-aware, static site generator in Ruby. 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.

What is Middleman? A static site generator using all the shortcuts and tools in modern web development. Middleman is a command-line tool for creating static websites using all the shortcuts and tools of the modern web development environment.

Jekyll and Middleman belong to "Static Site Generators" category of the tech stack.

Some of the features offered by Jekyll are:

  • Simple - No more databases, comment moderation, or pesky updates to install—just your content.
  • Static - Markdown (or Textile), Liquid, HTML & CSS go in. Static sites come out ready for deployment.
  • Blog-aware - Permalinks, categories, pages, posts, and custom layouts are all first-class citizens here.

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

  • Sass for DRY stylesheets
  • CoffeeScript for safer and less verbose javascript
  • Multiple asset management solutions, including Sprockets

"Github pages integration" is the top reason why over 65 developers like Jekyll, while over 17 developers mention "Rails for static sites" as the leading cause for choosing Middleman.

Jekyll and Middleman are both open source tools. It seems that Jekyll with 38.1K GitHub stars and 8.31K forks on GitHub has more adoption than Middleman with 6.49K GitHub stars and 696 GitHub forks.

According to the StackShare community, Jekyll has a broader approval, being mentioned in 111 company stacks & 125 developers stacks; compared to Middleman, which is listed in 32 company stacks and 17 developer stacks.

Decisions about Jekyll and Middleman
Manuel Feller
Frontend Engineer at BI X · | 4 upvotes · 153.3K views

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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Pros of Jekyll
Pros of Middleman
  • 74
    Github pages integration
  • 54
    Open source
  • 37
    It's slick, customisable and hackerish
  • 24
    Easy to deploy
  • 23
    Straightforward cms for the hacker mindset
  • 7
    Gitlab pages integration
  • 5
    Best for blogging
  • 2
    Low maintenance
  • 2
    Easy to integrate localization
  • 1
    Huge plugins ecosystem
  • 1
    Authoring freedom and simplicity
  • 20
    Rails for static sites
  • 18
    Erb, haml, slim
  • 17
    Live reload
  • 7
    Easy setup
  • 3
    Emacs org-mode integration by middleman-org
  • 1
    Make front-end easy and rock solid again

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Cons of Jekyll
Cons of Middleman
  • 4
    Build time increases exponentially as site grows
  • 2
    Lack of developments lately
  • 1
    Og doesn't work with postings dynamically
    Be the first to leave a con

    Sign up to add or upvote consMake informed product decisions

    What is 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.

    What is Middleman?

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

    Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

    What companies use Jekyll?
    What companies use Middleman?
    See which teams inside your own company are using Jekyll or Middleman.
    Sign up for StackShare EnterpriseLearn More

    Sign up to get full access to all the companiesMake informed product decisions

    What tools integrate with Jekyll?
    What tools integrate with Middleman?

    Sign up to get full access to all the tool integrationsMake informed product decisions

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    What are some alternatives to Jekyll and Middleman?
    WordPress
    The core software is built by hundreds of community volunteers, and when you’re ready for more there are thousands of plugins and themes available to transform your site into almost anything you can imagine. Over 60 million people have chosen WordPress to power the place on the web they call “home” — we’d love you to join the family.
    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.
    Ghost
    Ghost is a platform dedicated to one thing: Publishing. It's beautifully designed, completely customisable and completely Open Source. Ghost allows you to write and publish your own blog, giving you the tools to make it easy and even fun to do.
    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.
    See all alternatives