Add to Chrome
Add to Edge
Add to Firefox
Add to Opera
Add to Brave
Add to SafariWhen comparing Middleman vs Hexo, the Slant community recommends Middleman for most people. In the question“What are the best static site generators?” Middleman is ranked 7th while Hexo is ranked 11th. The most important reason people chose Middleman is:
[Minification and compression](http://middlemanapp.com/advanced/file-size-optimization/index.html) are as easy as setting a few configuration options, and [unique asset hashes](http://middlemanapp.com/advanced/improving-cacheability/) are available to allow you to invalidate the cache of files that change regularly.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Built in minification, compression, and cache busting
Minification and compression are as easy as setting a few configuration options, and unique asset hashes are available to allow you to invalidate the cache of files that change regularly.
Pro Support for a variety of templating languages and preprocessors
Middleman supports lots of compiled languages, such as Less, Markdown, Textile, CoffeeScript, Stylus and more.
Pro Extensible and flexible
Middleman has a resources page full of official and community extensions.
Pro External pipeline management with Webpack
Replace your Gulp, Grunt, Bower configs
Pro Embraces Rails conventions
Middleman follows established conventions so if you know rails, you can easily pick up middleman.
Pro Easy deployment options
Pro Fast and easy to use
Pro Deployment is easy and fast
Hexo built sites can be easily deployed to Github pages, Heroku, Openshift (custom cartridge needs to be setup) or any other custom solution (just copy over thepublic folder). Any deployment is as simple as editing the _config.yml file and running the hexo deploycommand
Pro Generating a blog is pretty fast
Generating a new blog with Hexo is generally really fast. Hexo truly lives up to it's name as a simple and fast static website generator.
Pro Constantly updated and actively maintained
Hexo's repository in GitHub is very active and it's actively being maintained. Updates are released every two or three months.
Pro Complete and helpful documentation
Hexo's documentation is very thorough and helpful, especially for people who are just starting with it.
Cons
Con Too much magic happens
For new users it is hard to understand what is going on and why.
Con A little more complicated than other static site generators
Middleman is a big piece of software, it's not simply a static blog generator. Because of all the functionality and flexibility it offers it can be a little more complex than other static site generators and a little harder to learn all of its bells and whistles.
Con Relatively large community but the majority is non-english speakers
Hexo has a relatively large following and community, especially in China. While this is certainly a positive, many developers who do not know chinese would be unable to follow all the guides and tutorials out there written by their chineses counterparts.
