When comparing Nikola vs Sphinx, the Slant community recommends Nikola for most people. In the question“What are the best static site generators?” Nikola is ranked 10th while Sphinx is ranked 16th. The most important reason people chose Nikola is:
Nikola posts may be written in a variety of formats. You can write posts in HTML, with all the expressive power of HTML and CSS, and still have the benefits of a site-wide theme and navigation structure.
Specs
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Pros
Pro HTML input
Nikola posts may be written in a variety of formats. You can write posts in HTML, with all the expressive power of HTML and CSS, and still have the benefits of a site-wide theme and navigation structure.
Pro Host on any web server
Nikloa sites are static files, and thus may be hosted on any web server that allows you to upload your own files. This lets you use simple and inexpensive hosting providers and still have a reliable site.
Pro Write in reStructuredText and Markdown
You have better choices for markup than raw HTML.
Pro Free open-source software (MIT license)
Pro Good search performance
Pro Fast indexing
Since Sphinx talks directly to the database, indexing speed is very fast.
Pro Rich database-like querying features
Pro Batch and real-time full-text indexes
Pro SQL database indexing
Pro Advanced full-text searching syntax
Pro Easy application integration
Pro Non-text attributes support
Pro Non-SQL storage indexing
Pro Good relevance ranking
By default results are ranked by relevance. If you wish, you can adjust the ranking by giving more weight to certain fields.