Overview

Jekyll

Stacks1.9K

Followers1.4K

Votes230

GitHub Stars51.0K

Forks10.2K

Pelican

Stacks88

Followers113

Votes28

GitHub Stars13.1K

Forks1.8K

Jekyll vs Pelican: What are the differences?

Introduction

In this article, we will explore the key differences between Jekyll and Pelican, two popular static site generators.

Templating Language: Jekyll uses Liquid templating language, while Pelican uses Jinja2. Liquid is more beginner-friendly and has simpler syntax, making it easier for non-programmers to understand and use. On the other hand, Jinja2 is more powerful and flexible, allowing for complex templating scenarios and advanced functionality.
Language Support: Jekyll primarily uses Ruby, while Pelican is built with Python. This difference in programming languages can have an impact on customization and development aspects. Ruby is known for its concise and elegant syntax, while Python is often praised for its readability and ease of use. So, if you are already familiar with one of these languages, it may influence your choice between Jekyll and Pelican.
Plugins and Extensions: Jekyll has a larger number of plugins and extensions available in its ecosystem compared to Pelican. This is mainly due to Jekyll's popularity and a longer time it has been around. However, Pelican still offers a decent collection of plugins and extensions, covering common needs for most websites. It's worth considering your specific requirements and checking the availability of required plugins before making your choice.
Configuration: Jekyll uses a default configuration file named _config.yml, which is written in YAML format. It allows you to specify various settings for your site, such as URL structure, theme selection, and metadata. On the other hand, Pelican uses a Python module named pelicanconf.py to handle its configuration. This allows for more flexibility and customization options, especially for those comfortable with Python.
Development Philosophy: Jekyll follows the convention over configuration principle, providing a set of predefined folder structures and naming conventions. This makes it easier to get started quickly and maintain consistent website organization. Pelican, on the other hand, provides more freedom and flexibility to define your own project structure and naming conventions. This can be advantageous for experienced developers who prefer a more customized setup.
Community and Support: Both Jekyll and Pelican have active communities and offer good documentation, which can assist users in resolving issues and finding resources. However, Jekyll, being more widely adopted and established, may have a larger community and a more extensive range of tutorials, guides, and user-contributed content available. This can be beneficial when it comes to seeking help, learning, and sharing knowledge.

In summary, Jekyll and Pelican differ in their templating language, programming language, plugin availability, configuration approach, development philosophy, and community support, allowing users to choose a static site generator that aligns best with their specific needs and preferences.

Advice on Jekyll, Pelican

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

Kazim

Founder & Developer at Devkind

May 13, 2020

Needs advice

Fastest and quickest way to do static HTML site which is extremely fast? Do you consider above tools or is there anything more quicker or better? This is just a one time one pager site for now, no backend required. I might have such projects in future, having something to get familiar with which can immediately come into action to develop would be great advise!

53.5k views53.5k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Jekyll	Pelican
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.	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.
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.	Blog articles and pages;Comments, via an external service (Disqus). (Please note that while useful, Disqus is an external service, and thus the comment data will be somewhat outside of your control and potentially subject to data loss.);Theming support (themes are created using Jinja2 templates);PDF generation of the articles/pages (optional);Publication of articles in multiple languages;Atom/RSS feeds;Code syntax highlighting;Import from WordPress, Dotclear, or RSS feeds;Integration with external tools: Twitter, Google Analytics, etc. (optional);Fast rebuild times thanks to content caching and selective output writing.
Statistics
GitHub Stars 51.0K	GitHub Stars 13.1K
GitHub Forks 10.2K	GitHub Forks 1.8K
Stacks 1.9K	Stacks 88
Followers 1.4K	Followers 113
Votes 230	Votes 28
Pros & Cons
Pros 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 Cons 4 Build time increases exponentially as site grows 2 Lack of developments lately 1 Og doesn't work with postings dynamically	Pros 7 Open source 6 Jinja2 4 Easy to deploy 4 Implemented in Python 3 Plugability
Integrations
No integrations available	Markdown

What are some alternatives to Jekyll, Pelican?

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.

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.

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.