: You have a non-technical collaborator who’s creating content but who doesn’t or shouldn’t have access to your back end – or you’re working with a static-site generated that lacks any easy/GUI back-end.

: Use a third-party platform to help manage your content.

APIs can be used to automate content updates into your website

Lightweight relational database—“Excel on steroids”

: data can be exported manual or retrieved via API/Zapier

: All content is ultimately in tables, but can be displayed in grid, form, calendar, timeline, kanban, Gantt. Create relationships between content, enforce controlled vocabularies. Easy features you always wanted in spreadsheets like pulldown menus or tag lookups.

Notion is a knowledge management app that can build anything from wikis to project management using a combination of pages, content blocks, and databases. Notion can be used just for content creation, but it can also be used to create whole websites. Free pro licenses for education.

: Tools and tutorials are available to serve data from Notion to many major SSGs. For Jekyll, try the 

 gem. If you created an entire site in Notion, try the Python script 

. It harvests the entire Notion-published site and streamlines it for static publishing.

: The basics are simple, but some options— such as filtered database views— take experimentation to master. Setup of the content structure is all handled within the Notion app.

: It can become pretty sophisticated as databases have two-dozen data types including AI-driven content such as summaries and translation. Each database, in turn, can have many views — both in terms of filtering and sorting and in terms of presentation such as card-based or columnar.

: Anyone familiar with filling out online forms will feel at home in Notion with a little practice.

Sanity is software as a service that combines a headless CMS with a content database that can support highly sophisticated content architectures capable of supporting nearly any website, app, or service. It shines in ease of use for the end user. Paid accounts for larger projects, larger teams, more data, more features. Free pro accounts available for open source-creative commons projects.

: API-based. You call on the content using a robust, but custom query language.

: Difficult as you’re coding Typescript templates. However, automated templates are available for major frameworks such as Next.js, Astro, Angular, Sveltkit, and Remix. They get an entire site running on Vercel and Github with a few clicks. Solid documentation provide code patterns and Slack-based support is surprisingly robust.

: Extreme. “Finally, a system I can mold to the needs of my content instead of having to mold my content to the needs of the system” — Alia Levar Wegner, digital collections librarian at Miami University.

The familiar cloud spreadsheet application in the Google Docs Suite of apps.

: Familiar interface suitable for any short-length data entry + calculations. We use it for managing our staff list on the website: easy to edit a spreadsheet when a name or phone number changes, and the APIs update the website from the data.

We've described each tool separately, but how do they compare? We've compared each on a scale of 0-4 on difficulty of use, difficulty of setup, and sophistication of content possible to give you an idea of how the various tool compare to each other.

Four Content Tools Evaluated

These sites consolidate all the resources and offer multiple methods of narrowing the massive list, such as the base language the apps were created with. They both include learning resources such as training videos.

: This site’s tools directory focuses on SSGs and CMS products and also includes videos and learning materials. Sponsored by Netlify.

: This directory looks at the wider ecosystem and includes critical SSG integrations such as e-commerce and comment handling tools.

: Written in Ruby, this is the godfather of the Jamstack movement.

: Built for speed, this system is also widely used in academia. Written in Go.

: React-based SSG written to support wide-range of site types.

: Eleventy was created as a simpler Javascript-based alternative to Jekyll. Supports 11 templating languages.

: Next.js is a React framework designed for creating full-stack web applications. Static site generation is one of the tools in its belt.

: Astro is arguably the halfway point between 11ty and Next.js — it's a static site generator by default, but you can also integrate dynamic web applications authored in server-side rendering frameworks such as React, Svelte and Vue.

Popular Graphical Front Ends and “Headless CMS”

There are dozens of SSG front ends. Here are select ones that are open source or have free options for one-off sites…

 is an open source CMS designed for content management in a Git repository. Perfect for many static sites generators. 

: These are cloud-based CMS that offer free individual accounts.

: Open-source CMS featuring atomic-level content type building tools.

: Open-source, Git-backed visual-editing oriented CMS.

: Open-source CMS options requiring a full database and server setup (not unlike Wordpress or Drupal. Your data is then delivered via API.

: A different approach — your content management and static site generation is in one app entirely private on your personal computer.

Because static sites do not require databases, hosting overhead is minimal and can often be had for free. These hosts frequently have their own templates for getting started. They are known for speed as they are global content delivery networks (CDN) which host copies of your site on servers worldwide. The nearest server to your viewer is the one which delivers your site. While often free, additional services, such as custom domains cost additional.

Popular options for static sites include:

: Open source tool for creating digital collection and exhibit websites with static site generators.

SSG Resources and Tools

Tools that generate a static, hard-coded HTML website by combining data sets and templates; much like traditional content management system (CMS), except that the HTML rendering is done before the website is requested by the browser or app.

 Fast. There are no complex rendering or database calls.Secure. There is no exposed database, so there is nothing to hack.

: A lot of command-line work, fewer GUI options. Fewer template options than something like WordPress – customizable, but harder to outsource the customization.

An introduction to the JAMstack: the architecture of the modern web

Questions to ask before choosing a static site generator

Beginner’s Guide to Static Site Generators

: A design house blog post offers a geekier introduction to the latest top crop of SSGs.

Going Headless: Use Cases And What It’s Good For

Building a static website with Jekyll and GitHub Pages

Creating and Hosting a Personal Site on GitHub Pages

Using Static Site Generators for Scholarly Publications and Open Educational Resources

Setting Up a Github Pages Site with Jekyll:Github documentation

: A presentation on leveraging Jekyll for scholarly publishing in academic libraries.

: Free videos repository from their conferences.

: Markdown is a popular content markup syntax that is quicker and more convenient to use than hard coding HTML for your pages.

: Liquid is the templating language used in Jekyll and others SSGs.

15 minute hands-on web tutorial on using Git

: Git is the version-control code repository for SSGs.

Static Site Resources

Learn about Static Site Generators

What are Static Site Generators

Introductory articles

Tutorials

Resources

More Stories

Four Content Tools Evaluated

SSG Resources and Tools