Night Owl

Read the docs here.

Night Owl is a simple, elegant and fast static site generator for node.js.

Night Owl has a long list of features --- file-based routing, custom URLs, front-matter, tagging and collections, sorting, paginated indexes, nested layouts, multi-page templates, custom compilers, file watching, a local development server, live reloads, ECMAScript module imports, and more.

Support for a number of different template formats is also included. Generate HTML pages from Markdown, Pug, Handlebars, JavaScript, JSON and YAML. Use the built-in CSS, Sass, JavaScript and Typescript compilers to bundle files ready for the browser.

npm install night-owl

Read more about getting started.

Is this ready to use?

Night Owl is still a work in progress. Although most features are now implemented and the API is relatively stable, some bugs can still be expected. Minor versions may include breaking changes before reaching a stable v1.0.0.

Why not use another tool?

The driving purpose behind Night Owl is to provide a fast tool to develop static sites, with a focus on the Pug templating language. Pug's minimalist syntax comes at the cost of slow template compilation. Where some static site generators recompile templates every time any file changes, Night Owl waits for a specific template (or its dependencies) to change.

Night Owl also provides support for bundling client-side CSS and JavaScript without any extra configuration. Modern tools often force you to buy in to a complex and often unnecessary framework. Others require you to roll your own Rollup or Webpack configuration in addition to setting up your site.

Night Owl aims to to strike the right balance between flexibility and simplicity, providing enough to get you started without getting in the way.