Static website generators seem to come and go -- would anyone like to comment on one they like that seems to be lasting the test of time? The obvious one seems to be jekyll (possibly with octopress on top of it), but I'm interested in any others.
Middleman has been the most usable for me. In the past I've tried Jekyll, Hexo, Huge and DocPad.
Middleman is just simple enough that you can quickly build out an entire website/blog with great functionality, but extensible enough that you can write some custom Ruby to do that one specific thing you want.
I also really like how middleman can essentially use any markdown renderer or template engine. As someone that loves erb, Sass and Rake, Middleman just makes the most sense.
http://www.staticgen.com is a great tool to help you find one to fit your needs. It does a daily poll of github stats on the most popular static site generators (72 on last count!) and lets you sort by programming language and popularity.
That being said, I'm been using gulp to hack together a system when the site isn't something conventional like a blog, marketing page or docs that many of these generators excel at.
Pelican I've had great luck with so far, but I can't testify honestly to whether it will last. Since it is Python and makefiles, I have found it very easy to modify myself just with my background knowledge.
Middleman still receives consistent updates. It's been a rock solid platform for us to build static websites and the occasional prototype out of for the last few years. Deploys easily to GitHub pages, too.
