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Add to SafariWhen comparing Harp vs DocPad, the Slant community recommends DocPad for most people. In the question“What are the best static site generators?” DocPad is ranked 6th while Harp is ranked 29th. The most important reason people chose DocPad is:
DocPad is published as an NPM module which makes it easy to integrate with an existing Node.js deployment.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Compiles assets on request
Rather than regenerate the whole site when a file changes, Harp only reloads what is necessary, keeping the compile time fast.
Pro Supports popular languages
Harp supports a large variety of languages, including Jade, CoffeeScript, Stylus and Sass. See the full list here.
Pro Built on Node
DocPad is published as an NPM module which makes it easy to integrate with an existing Node.js deployment.
Pro Has an active plug-in ecosystem
DocPad's has a large amount of plug-ins available to extend its functionality and compatibility with other language preprocessors and markup languages.
- Javascript preprocessors include: Coffescript, TypeScript, and LiveScript.
- CSS preprocessors include: LESS, SASS, Stylus, and Roole
- HTML markups include: Markdown, and Textile
- Templating engines include: Eco, Handlebars, Moustache, HAML, CoffeeKup, Jade, and Teacup
- JSON converters include: YAML and CSON
Pro Has Live Reload
DocPad has a Live Reload plug-in that leverages websockets to automatically update the blog content for users live on the site.
Pro Built on top of the Express framework
Although DocPad is a static site generator, if you find the need to, you can extend the site with the Express framework for dynamic content as well.
Pro Has graphical admin interfaces for managing your blog
There are multiple custom interfaces, including miniCMS available to DocPad which provide WYSIWYG editing and article management.
Pro Easy to deploy
Deployment plug-ins make deploying to hosting providers even easier, with plug-ins for GitHub Pages, AWS, and Google Storage.
Pro MIT-licensed
Pro Prebuilt Skeletons
Skeletons are boilerplate setups to provide a baseline structure for you to fill content into.
Pro Document and file querying with Query Engine
DocPad leverages Query Engine to provide a query API for querying files.
Cons
Con Limited extensibility
There are no plugins available to extend the functionality or language support of Harp.
Con Support for Handlebars templates is not mature - integration is awkward
Handlebars' philosophy of "no logic in templates" makes some things difficult:
- DocPad built-in template helpers aren't available by default - they have to be manually added/exposed
- DocPad's example template code often includes logic, which makes it impossible to use within Handlebars templates -- it has to be abstracted into custom helper functions.
- Can't pass objects to function calls from within HB templates.
Con More up-front investment to learn/use well
DocPad provides a LOT of extensibility and dynamic capability, which means there's more up-front investment to learn DocPad well -- and deviating from the defaults while maintaining project robustness may be difficult.
Con Written in CoffeeScript (which could be a Pro depending on your preference)
Con Code samples in Documentation and any online Q&As are in CoffeeScript only (no JavaScript samples available)
Con The default template engine (Eco) only supports CoffeeScript, not JavaScript
Con The default template engine (Eco) does not support multi-line code tags
