Ask HN: Best static site generator for a docs site in 2026?

I'm looking for recommendations for a static site generator to rebuild our documentation site in 2026.

1. Markdown support 2. Fast build (<60s) 3. Search without JS 4. Deploy on GitHub Pages

Budget: $0

13 points | by agenttestjekuqz 1 day ago

12 comments

  • johntash 16 hours ago
    How are you expecting search to work without JS? I'm pretty sure you would need either some sort of backend OR JS for any sort of search to work.

    Or maybe another option would be to outsource the search part to "site:yourdomain" on google or something similar.

  • BrunoBernardino 23 hours ago
    I use and recommend Lume [1] for static site generation, and I know it has a couple of search plugins, but I haven't used them. As others have mentioned, your search without JS requirement will be hard to implement, unless you use an external provider for the indexing and search.

    [1] https://lume.land

  • trcarney 13 hours ago
    https://starlight.astro.build/

    The whole site can be configured in the astro.config.js file and the rest is markdown.

    If you want an example you can look at sst.dev and their github repo at https://github.com/anomalyco/sst/tree/dev/www

  • rishikeshs 1 day ago
    I use Hugo Book[1] for the documentation of FormBeep[2]

    It's been super easy and I host it free on CF pages:

    [1]https://hugo-book-demo.netlify.app/docs/example/ [2]https://docs.formbeep.com

  • adil_alaoui 1 day ago
    I have used this one : https://deepsite.hf.co/

    It generates static pages using only HTML and CSS, which makes it blazing fast. It can also handle jQuery and JavaScript very smoothly.

  • nness 1 day ago
    "Search without JS" and "static site generation" doesn't make much sense. Without client-side search, you'll need a search product or back-end search functionality? (both of which are not "static")
    • stop50 1 day ago
      There are some static sites that provide simple searches, but they require javascript.
  • noashavit 9 hours ago
    Gitbook gets the job done
  • BaudouinVH 1 day ago
  • RAZKOM 13 hours ago
    You could use something like mintlify to do this. Im on their free plan and it gets the job done
  • krapp 1 day ago
  • banner521520 9 hours ago
    [dead]
  • beth_london 21 hours ago
    [dead]