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  1. Stackups
  2. Application & Data
  3. Frameworks
  4. Static Site Generators
  5. Metalsmith vs Nanoc

Metalsmith vs Nanoc

OverviewComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Metalsmith
Metalsmith
Stacks53
Followers66
Votes19
Nanoc
Nanoc
Stacks4
Followers3
Votes0
GitHub Stars2.1K
Forks249

Metalsmith vs Nanoc: What are the differences?

Developers describe Metalsmith as "An extremely simple, pluggable static site generator". 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. On the other hand, Nanoc is detailed as "A flexible static-site generator written in Ruby". Nanoc is a static-site generator, fit for building anything from a small personal blog to a large corporate website.

Metalsmith and Nanoc belong to "Static Site Generators" category of the tech stack.

Some of the features offered by Metalsmith are:

  • Read template files from a directory
  • Parse files for template placeholders
  • Prompt user to fill in each placeholder

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

  • Support for free-form metadata
  • Support for various markup languages (Markdown, AsciiDoc, Textile, …)
  • Support for various templating languages (eRuby, Haml, Mustache, …)

Metalsmith and Nanoc are both open source tools. Metalsmith with 7.29K GitHub stars and 645 forks on GitHub appears to be more popular than Nanoc with 1.75K GitHub stars and 236 GitHub forks.

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Detailed Comparison

Metalsmith
Metalsmith
Nanoc
Nanoc

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.

It is a static-site generator, fit for building anything from a small personal blog to a large corporate website.

Read template files from a directory;Parse files for template placeholders;Prompt user to fill in each placeholder;Render files with aytemplating engine;Write filled-in files to a new directory
Support for free-form metadata; Support for various markup languages (Markdown, AsciiDoc, Textile, …); Support for various templating languages (eRuby, Haml, Mustache, …); Ability to write custom filters and helpers; Ability to pull in data from other sources (databases, web APIs, …); Integration with various deployment mechanisms; Ability to run pre-deployment checks
Statistics
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Stars
2.1K
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
249
Stacks
53
Stacks
4
Followers
66
Followers
3
Votes
19
Votes
0
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 9
    Plugability
  • 4
    Easy to install, easy to hack, easy to deploy
  • 2
    Really works hard to be simple
  • 1
    Chain plugins like a file processing pipe
  • 1
    CI: push to github, auto-deploy to netlifly (free)
No community feedback yet
Integrations
No integrations available
Buddy
Buddy
Markdown
Markdown
GitLab Pages
GitLab Pages

What are some alternatives to Metalsmith, Nanoc?

Jekyll

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

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

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

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

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

Gridsome

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

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

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.

11ty

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

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.

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