

Ask HN:  Recommendations on a simple static site generator? - rprospero

My research group wants to put up a website.  I'm the only person in the group who knows HTML, so this would fall on my lap, except I'm leaving soon, so they need something other people will be able to maintain.  My thought was to use a static site generator that future students could then add pages too without necessarily needing to play with the templates.  However, I have an awkward set of requirements.<p>1)  The site must be static.  There's no ruby/perl/php/python on the server.<p>2)  The software must run well under  Windows.  Future students will need to be able to install the software under Windows on their own.  The students will have a passing familiarity with the command line, but I'd prefer if they didn't need to deal with Windows PATH variable issues.  Something with a dedicated Windows installer would be a definite plus.<p>3)  The system must be relatively simple to run.  Future students will have some programming experience, most likely Fortran or Python, so they're capable of handling some complexity.  On the other hand, since this is a side project for them, it'd be nice if they didn't have to learn a new programming language.
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MeyerMeyer
Hi, I've made a really simple python script to do this. It's far from complete
but you can use it as a sample to start something with your students
(<http://veed.fr/gugodoc/>) Of course, if you need more "power" , your best
bet is to choose a more professional solution ;-) I hope you will find
something that fits your needs here :

[http://iwantmyname.com/blog/2011/02/list-static-website-
gene...](http://iwantmyname.com/blog/2011/02/list-static-website-
generators.html)

Regards

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rprospero
Dammit. Your gugodoc is so close to what I need that the Hacker instinct is
taking over and I'm thinking about how I could modify it to give me the rest
(e.g. no frames, HTML for the header and footer). However, that's probably
just my mind finding another glorious way to procrastinate on my thesis, so I
better not.

~~~
MeyerMeyer
You're right thesis first ! But please keep your hacker instinct for later use
;-) Programming must stay fun.

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rprospero
In case anyone else runs into the same issue, I finally found Poole to be
useful. I can wrap everything in Py2Exe to make it easy to distribute and the
software itself is simple enough that it doesn't require much expertise.

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fagatini
I like <http://popjs.com>

