Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Sitegen VS Metalsmith

Compare Sitegen VS Metalsmith and see what are their differences

Sitegen logo Sitegen

Frontend Development

Metalsmith logo Metalsmith

An extremely simple, pluggable static site generator.
  • Sitegen Landing page
    Landing page //
    2020-01-09
  • Metalsmith Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-12-12

Sitegen features and specs

No features have been listed yet.

Metalsmith features and specs

  • Flexible Architecture
    Metalsmith has a simple, yet powerful, plugin-based architecture that allows developers to easily customize and extend functionality to suit their specific needs.
  • Minimalistic Core
    Its lightweight core handles only the basic functions, which ensures that the site generation is fast and efficient, allowing you to only add what you need through plugins.
  • Ease of Use
    The straightforward configuration and operation of Metalsmith make it accessible for users, with minimal setup required to get started.
  • Active Community
    A vibrant community provides ample plugins and support, making it easier to find existing solutions and get help when you encounter issues.
  • Language Flexibility
    Being written in JavaScript and built on Node.js, it fits neatly within the modern web development ecosystem and is accessible to JavaScript developers.

Possible disadvantages of Metalsmith

  • Steeper Learning Curve for Beginners
    Users without prior experience in static site generators or those unfamiliar with Node.js might find the initial setup and understanding of its plugin-based system challenging.
  • Limited Official Documentation
    While there is basic documentation available, the official resources can be sparse, which might make it difficult for new users to get up to speed quickly without community assistance.
  • Maintenance Overhead
    With its heavy reliance on plugins, projects can become tricky to manage over time, especially if key plugins become obsolete or unmaintained.
  • Manual Plugin Integration
    Since all additional features need to be added through plugins, users must invest time in searching for, evaluating, and integrating these plugins to get desired functionalities.
  • Not Opinionated
    While this is a strength for flexibility, it can also be a downside as it doesn't provide a structured path for common use cases, requiring more decisions from the user.

Sitegen videos

SiteGen Tutorial 1 - Administrator Login

Metalsmith videos

Product Review 29 Badger Metalsmith Paint System

More videos:

  • Review - METALSMITHING FAQ! Answers to most commonly asked questions from you guys!
  • Review - DRAWING & SAWING jewelry design in real time. Jewelry metalsmithing

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Sitegen and Metalsmith)
CMS
24 24%
76% 76
Blogging
25 25%
75% 75
Blogging Platform
25 25%
75% 75
Static Site Generators
30 30%
70% 70

User comments

Share your experience with using Sitegen and Metalsmith. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Metalsmith seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 6 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Sitegen mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of Sitegen yet. Tracking of Sitegen recommendations started around Mar 2021.

Metalsmith mentions (6)

  • Top ten popular static site generators (SSG) in 2023
    Metalsmith — the best customizable SSG. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • who is self-hosting a static website and what are you using to build it?
    I use Metalsmith. Been happy with it. I build my site into a self-contained nginx docker image. Source: about 3 years ago
  • Configuration error even if nothing changed since last successful deploy
    Const Metalsmith = require('metalsmith') Const markdown = require('@metalsmith/markdown') Const layouts = require('metalsmith-layouts') Const permalinks = require('@metalsmith/permalinks') Const collections = require('metalsmith-collections') Metalsmith(__dirname) .metadata({ sitename: 'Website Name', description: "Website description.", generator: 'Metalsmith', url: 'https://metalsmith.io/' ... Source: about 3 years ago
  • Why I built my own static site generator
    A static site generator I've been enjoying lately (and using for my blog) is Metalsmith: https://metalsmith.io/ It feel like it's the best of both worlds, because it's simple to learn and customize, but there are plugins for the things you don't want to spend time writing yourself. For example, I'm using plugins to: check for broken links, generate an RSS feed, and run a test server with automatic reloading. But... - Source: Hacker News / over 3 years ago
  • What to use? Frustrated over choice...
    I really like using Metalsmith as a static site generator myself. It's incredibly lightweight and you can extend it in any direction you like if you feel the need. But if you want an out-of-the-box solution, grab something like Gatsby or Hugo. This site has a big list of them. Source: about 4 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Sitegen and Metalsmith, you can also consider the following products

GatsbyJS - Blazing-fast static site generator for React

MiddleMan - A static site generator using all the shortcuts and tools in modern web development

Wintersmith - Flexible, minimalistic, multi-platform static site generator built on top of node.js

JBake - "Jekyll of the JVM"

Hexo - A fast, simple & powerful blog framework, powered by Node.js

Octopress - A static blogging framework for hackers, based on Jekyll

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