Could you go into a little more detail about how Jekyll isn't/wasn't versatile enough? Maybe a use case or two where it failed (or was too complicated) for you?

I'm actually about to learn Jekyll to make a blog today, so I'm very curious. My primary reasons for going Jekyll are that (a) it seems to have the most mindshare (in the Ruby world and in general) and (b) I can just deploy using git with Github Pages.

Relatedly, if anyone is a Jekyll user (which seems pretty common around here), are there any plugins/modifications I should be using?

Jekyll is made for blogs. Specifically, blogs using HTML, Markdown, or Textile. Anything past that starts to become a hack.

There are inherent constraints to the framework because it must be "safe" enough for GitHub's environment. For example, an issue close to my heart:

https://github.com/mojombo/jekyll/issues/225

I'm a very big proponent of the Jekyll approach, and made a few plugins for my own use (https://github.com/josegonzalez/josediazgonzalez.com/tree/ma...). I also started the list of plugins on the Jekyll Wiki (https://github.com/mojombo/jekyll/wiki/Plugins), so I recommend you check both of those out.

Stasis seems nice, but I'm not sure the changes I'd have to implement to move to it would be worth the trouble.

Excellent. Thanks!

Any in particular that you think are sensible defaults? I looked at that plugin page earlier and it seemed like a lot to read. What are the core 3--5 plugins that anyone writing a blog should be using?

Yeah that's kind of what I'm finding with nanoc. Seems to be a large time investment at the start to understand how the whole compilation process works, and then to get the basic skeleton created for your site (or maybe it's just my stupidity?).

I'll see if I can give Stasis a try this weekend. Thanks for creating it!