When comparing Sphinx vs Middleman, the Slant community recommends Middleman for most people. In the question“What are the best static site generators?” Middleman is ranked 7th while Sphinx is ranked 16th. 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
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
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.
Pro Excellent scalability
Pro Distributed searching
Pro Flexible text processing
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
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.