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hexojs/hexo
A fast, simple & powerful blog framework, powered by Node.js.
Hexo is a Node.js static site generator aimed at bloggers who want Markdown-based content with template-driven themes. It sits between Jekyll (simpler, slower) and Hugo (faster, steeper learning curve) — the plugin and theme ecosystem is the main draw. Best fit for developers who want a blog up quickly without wrestling with Go templates.
1. The extension model is genuinely well-designed: filters, generators, helpers, renderers, and tags all have clean registration APIs under lib/extend/, making plugins predictable to write. 2. Incremental generation and a file-watching dev server mean the edit-preview loop is fast even on large sites. 3. Test coverage is thorough — there's a test file for almost every source file, including edge cases in processors and tag parsing. 4. Built-in i18n support at the template level (lib/theme/processors/i18n.ts) is something most competing generators bolt on as an afterthought.
1. Still using Moment.js (lib/models/types/moment.ts) in 2026 — Moment is deprecated and unmaintained; this is dead weight that inflates the bundle and blocks moving to temporal. 2. The in-memory database (using a custom binary_relation_index) means large sites with thousands of posts will hit memory limits before they hit disk limits — there's no streaming or lazy-load path. 3. Theme ecosystem quality is extremely uneven; the official theme list is basically a link dump with no curation, so you'll spend time evaluating dozens of abandoned themes. 4. One-command deploy is convenient but couples your content repo to deployment credentials in config files, which creates awkward secret management for teams.