Static Web Generators

Sometimes I've come across the need of creating a small website, where a CMS or other Dynamic Web Development Frameworks (e.g. Rails or Django) are either too much or not available due to server restrictions. Of course, one option is to do it by hand, but that is usually tedious and in general, a bad idea. So I decided to look for tools to develop good quality static websites (plain HTML+CSS files, maybe with JS), keeping a nice separation between content and presentation.

There are many options. This post is not a review of them but just a list of the ones I've found so far, for personal reference. They are developed either using Ruby or Python, so if you plan to tweak the source code, pick the language you like (I'm sure you can find other based in Java, C, or other languages, but I feel comfortable with the aforementioned, so I didn't look for others).

The list:

• Hyde (Python)
• Jekyll (Ruby)
• Webby (Ruby)
• Nanoc (Ruby)
• Static (Ruby)
• StaticMatic (Ruby)
• WebGen (Ruby)

If you now others, please let me know to add them to the list.