IAianwalter·Sep 10, 2018
Your requirements made me think of Cactus (https://github.com/eudicots/Cactus). It was pretty nice but I don't think it's being actively maintained anymore.
In Top Open-Source Static Site Generatorseudicots
Cactus
Python2012–2018
eudicots / Cactus
Cactus
Static site generator for designers. Uses Python and Django templates.
12Distinct people
19Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
3.5KGitHub stars
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What it is
Static site generator for designers. Uses Python and Django templates.
GitHub
Where it is used
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What people are saying
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This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year19 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2012-04-05 22:36:13 UTC to 2018-09-10 17:18:55 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 | 2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 7 | 2 | 5 |
| 2013 | 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| 2014 | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2015 | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 5 | 0 | 5 |
| 2016 | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
What Hacker News says
19 sourcesKudos to Koen and to the whole Framer Team. They are a passionate and outstandingly competent and available crew, which is constantly giving back to the design/coding/makers community. ps> I use your open source tool cactus on a daily basis: https://github.com/eudicots/Cactus!
In A story of a designer learning mathI want to also vote up Cactus despite the lack of attention paid to it lately. IMO it's very well designed and deserves to be worked on by a wider community.
It's open sourced via BSD 3 clause: https://github.com/koenbok/cactus
I especially liked the "deploy to s3" feature, IMO the cheapest way to run a highly scalable static site today.
Alternatively, a "deploy to GitHub page" would be neat as well.
I would work on extending Cactus if it was a bigger problem personally, but so far what's released fits my needs already.
In Introducing Lektor – A Static File Content Management System For Pythonwe just moved our very own https://crate.io site from wordpress to cactus (python-based, https://github.com/koenbok/cactus).
just opened our github repo: https://github.com/crate/crate-web
it also includes a script to pull in existing wordpress blog posts.
In Powerstrip: prototype Docker extensions todaywe at crate switched to https://github.com/koenbok/cactus and are really happy with it. we had a really bad experience with wordpress and are so glad we switched.
In Powerstrip: prototype Docker extensions todayIt's available on UNIX systems from the CLI, and is open source: https://github.com/koenbok/cactus
In Cactus for Mac – A fast, easy and free static site generatorMaker here. This is a nice UI based on the open source: https://github.com/koenbok/Cactus/tree/v3
We decided to make it free to fully focus on http://framerjs.com, out prototyping tool: http://cactusformac.com/blog/posts/cactus-and-glueprint.html
In Cactus for Mac – A fast, easy and free static site generatorIf you're looking to django for static mostly for the templating engine and some build time python, I'd check out the excellent Cactus. Apparently there's a new downloadable mac app for it, which I've yet to try, but as a Django templater / designer, Cactus was always my goto for static sites.
https://github.com/koenbok/Cactus?source=c
In Using Django for mostly static sitesThe app is based on the open source https://github.com/koenbok/Cactus
In Cactus for MacI like Cactus (https://github.com/koenbok/Cactus) and PieCrust (http://bolt80.com/piecrust/). They are both super flexible and have met my static generator needs nicely.
Haven't tried Hyde or Jekyll.
In Ask HN: What is your favorite system for static website generation?Here's a small, shameless, open source, plug: I work on the "Cactus" static website generator, check out and fork our work here: github.com/koenbok/Cactus (current version), https://github.com/krallin/Cactus (next version)
In Keep a static "emergency mode" site on S3Only three, but some are quite big.
Framer http://www.framerjs.com - Modern prototyping tool for web and mobile using javascript and css transitions.
Cactus http://github.com/koenbok/Cactus - Simple static site generator with s3 deployment aimed at designers.
Cavia http://github.com/koenbok/Cavia - Document store on top of sql modeled after bigtable/appengine datastore, and how FriendFeed stored data in mysql.
In All of my side-projects from 2012A static website generator in Python
140 points · Open discussionhttps://github.com/koenbok/Cactus
Simple. Quick deployments. Python/django based.
In Poll: What's your favorite static site generator?My side project Cactus is a simpler alternative to Jekyll and has s3 deployments built in: https://github.com/koenbok/Cactus
In Jekyll blog on Amazon S3 and CloudFrontShowing the 15 most recent of 19 sources. Enable JavaScript to search and browse every indexed mention.