Nift vs Stacy

Nift, short for nifty site manager, is a cross-platform open source git-like and LaTeX-like site manager. You should be able to create any site you want (both static and non-static/dynamic) using Nift, though will need some kind of web server such as Apache, NGinx, a LAMP stack, etc. to host non-static/dynamic sites, whereas static sites can easily be hosted with platforms like BitBucket, GitHub, GitLab and Netlify.

Philosophy

The intent for creating Nift (aka nsm) in the first place was to make a command-line site manager that was as git-like and LaTeX-like as possible, the creator/developer of Nift has achieved what was desired and hopes others may find it just as useful for their own wants and/or needs.

About Stacy

Stacy is a website generator that combines content from Contentful CMS with Handlebars templates to create the website pages. A few highlights:

• The website content is stored in Contentful CMS where the content authors work with it.
• Templates, used to generate pages from content entries in Contentful, as well as static content (stylesheets, fonts, images used in the website design, etc.) are part of a version controlled (e.g. git) project. Templates use Handlebars extended with a few Stacy helpers allowing inclusion of nested content entries, rendering assets, rich text, etc.
• The website is published in Amazon S3, from where it is served.
• When content changes, Contentful notifies Stacy in AWS via a webhook, which allows Stacy to automatically regenerate and republish affected pages.

The automatic site regeneration upon content changes is the main distinguishing feature of Stacy. It takes Stacy beyond simple static site generation and combines CMS managed content with speed and simplicity of hosting a static website.