From Static and Dynamic Websites to Static Site Generators
Name
Hillar Petersen
Abstract
Dynamic Content Management Systems like WordPress are used on almost half of the world’s active websites. As many of these sites are content-driven, like blogs, news sites, personal, company and organisation websites, rendering them dynamically does not offer any value compared to if they were static.
Paradigmatic differences between static and dynamic websites are analysed and the bene-fits of each described. It is found that for static-by-nature websites, static approach has core benefits such as security and end-user performance, as benefits of dynamic platforms come mainly from the more mature toolset.
Features and usability of three popular Static Site Generators – Jekyll, Hexo and Hugo are analysed. It is found that Jekyll and Hugo are more suitable for universal websites, as Hexo is oriented for blogging. Hugo should be preferred for a large website, as its site generation speed is significantly faster than Jekyll’s. However, the extensibility of Hugo is more complicated.
Additional tools in the growing static websites ecosystem are pointed out. Some ways of combining these to create a complete toolset are given and ideas for future development proposed.
Paradigmatic differences between static and dynamic websites are analysed and the bene-fits of each described. It is found that for static-by-nature websites, static approach has core benefits such as security and end-user performance, as benefits of dynamic platforms come mainly from the more mature toolset.
Features and usability of three popular Static Site Generators – Jekyll, Hexo and Hugo are analysed. It is found that Jekyll and Hugo are more suitable for universal websites, as Hexo is oriented for blogging. Hugo should be preferred for a large website, as its site generation speed is significantly faster than Jekyll’s. However, the extensibility of Hugo is more complicated.
Additional tools in the growing static websites ecosystem are pointed out. Some ways of combining these to create a complete toolset are given and ideas for future development proposed.
Graduation Thesis language
English
Graduation Thesis type
Bachelor - Information Technology
Supervisor(s)
Karl Blum, Tõnu Tamme
Defence year
2016