My first blog ran on Movable Type, back when it was Perl-based, more than a decade ago. I hosted it on HostMonster or BlueHost—I can't remember which. Later I used Donews' WordPress service. After that shut down, I went a long time without blogging, then started self-hosting WordPress again, and at some point moved to Hengtian hosting. WordPress has stayed relatively stable, has a large open-source plugin ecosystem, and is easy to get started with. That probably explains why it has survived since 2003 without fading.
Around 2023 I learned how to set up Hexo. NotionNext was mostly an exercise in going through the motions: Notion's block layout, plus the fact that both it and Hexo needed a VPN, and Git required typing all those commands. It felt like too much ceremony. With Obsidian, I open the app and start writing; it isn't as heavy as VS Code, and it doesn't push me toward the command line. But once the novelty wore off, I wanted to try the cumbersome path again, so I decided to rebuild and dig deeper.
I first encountered static blogs through Hexo, but I have kept switching systems: Hexo → Hugo → WordPress → Hugo → Next.js → Astro. Some of the choices I see from other bloggers look carefully considered; I suspect they did a lot of research before settling on a tool.
Hugo has the most GitHub stars. That makes sense. It builds hundreds of Markdown files much faster than Hexo, with fewer errors. Its plugin and resource ecosystem is solid. Fellow bloggers I follow use Hugo, Hexo, and Astro, among others.
Hexo was written by a Taiwanese developer. Apart from the speed issue, it's fine. It has a large user base and many stars.
Gatsby is more common outside China. It relies mainly on React and GraphQL.
Astro is fast too, and it sits in the frontend framework world.
Jekyll, Pelican, VuePress, Nuxt.js, and Middleman are still blank spots for me. I haven't planned to build or test them; I'll look into them later if I get to it. Writing content doesn't necessarily mean I'll build and use it. I've just read a lot of material and formed impressions. I've also seen the idea of building a static site with WordPress and Astro; that combination sounds interesting.
Server-side rendering and client-side rendering are also considerations. Depending on the business type and architecture, one may make more sense than the other.
A craftsman sharpens his tools before doing good work, but this tool isn't easy to sharpen, and the work isn't easy either. So just find one that feels comfortable and use it.