Add to Chrome
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Add to SafariWhen comparing Middleman vs Publii, the Slant community recommends Middleman for most people. In the question“What are the best static site generators?” Middleman is ranked 7th while Publii is ranked 21st. 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 WordPress import
Pro Search engine form & SEO included
Pro Free and open source
WYSIWYG.
Pro Social media friendly (generates cards)
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 Mostly blog oriented
Con Poor support community
A very poor support community, and a developer who is just way too sensitive to any feedback.
Con Limited
Very limited free themes, that really are quite useless. Other themes cost quite a bit of money.
