Pelican is a static site generator that requires no database or server-side logic. It supports Markdown and reST syntax. Pelican uses the Jinja templating engine due to its flexibility and straightforward syntax.
“Pelican” is an anagram for calepin, which means “notebook” in French.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Write content in reStructuredText or Markdown markup.
- Articles (e.g., blog posts) and pages (e.g., “About”, “Projects”, “Contact”)
- Integration with external services.
- Site themes (created using Jinja2 templates)
- Publication of articles in multiple languages.
- Generation of Atom and RSS feeds.
- Code syntax highlighting – colorized syntax highlighting for your code blocks.
- Fast rebuild times thanks to content caching and selective output writing
- Completely static output is easy to host anywhere.
- Publish content in multiple languages.
- Import from WordPress, RSS feeds, and other services. Supported import formats:
- Blogger XML export.
- Dotclear export.
- Posterous API.
- Tumblr API.
- WordPress XML export.
- RSS/Atom feed.
- Modular plugin system and corresponding plugin repository. Plugins are a way to add features to Pelican without having to directly modify the Pelican core.
- File metadata – the software tries to get information it needs from the file system.
Website: blog.getpelican.com
Support: Documentation, GitHub Code Repository
Developer: Justin Mayer
License: GNU Affero General Public License Version 3
Pelican is written in Python. Learn Python with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Python Static Site Generators | |
|---|---|
| MkDocs | Project documentation with Markdown. It's easy to use and extensible |
| Pelican | Static site generator that supports Markdown and reST syntax |
| Sphinx | Create intelligent and beautiful documentation for Python projects |
| Lektor | Flexible and powerful static content management system |
| Nikola | Static website and blog generator |
| Bestatic | Really minimal yet feature-rich |
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| Grow | Declarative website generator |
| Hyde | Support for powerful template languages like Jinja2 |
| Cactus | Simple but powerful static website generator |
| Stapy | Works with Python on any operating system without additional packages. |
| Frozen-Flask | Freezes a Flask application into a set of static files |
| Blurry | Focused on page speed and SEO |
| Urubu | Micro content management system for static websites |
| Miyadaiku | Suitable for blogs, documentation, and other static publishing projects |
| incorporeal-cms | Lightweight static site generator for Markdown-based sites |
| blag | Blog-aware, static site generator which uses Markdown |
| wmk | Flexible and versatile static site generator |
| Pagegen | With reStructuredText or Markdown markup and Mako templates |
| Baku | Simple, Markdown-based blogging engine/static website generator |
| Aurora | Support for static and incremental builds |
| Genja | Uses Jinja templates for page rendering |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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