Jekyll vs Roq

Jekyll is a free, open-source tool that turns plain text into static websites and blogs. It combines Markdown, Liquid, HTML, and CSS with layouts, producing static files ready for deployment. Blog features include permalinks, categories, pages, posts, and custom layouts. A plugin system with hooks can generate content and extend builds without changing Jekyll itself. Community-maintained themes provide templates and styles, and site content can override theme files. Generated sites may be deployed manually, through automation, or with third-party services. GitHub Pages is powered by Jekyll and offers free hosting with custom domain support. Jekyll supports Linux, macOS, Windows, and self-hosted use. Installation requires Ruby 2.7.0 or higher, RubyGems, GCC, and Make. Safe mode requires explicit plugin permission through a whitelist. A volunteer core team maintains the project.

Roq is a free, open-source static site generator built with Java and Quarkus. It creates websites and blogs from Markdown and outputs static files for GitHub Pages, Netlify, or another static server. The project is aimed at AI users and coders, including developers who want zero configuration with customization in Java. Development mode provides a local preview server and live reload, while a browser WYSIWYG editor supports content editing and previewing. Markdown works by default, with plugins for AsciiDoc, tagging, search, diagrams, series, and sitemaps. The default theme includes a blog layout, dark mode, sidebar navigation, responsive design, and social links. Roq bundles CSS, JavaScript, and web assets with esbuild and can use npm packages through mvnpm without Node.js. A GitHub Action supports publishing, and GitLab CI is documented. The CLI installs through JBang on Linux, macOS, and Windows.