lektor: Build Static Websites with a Content Management System

Overview

Lektor turns a project’s source files into a collection of HTML pages for deployment as a static website. Its built-in admin UI provides a way to manage site content, while the static output avoids needing a dynamic application server to serve the finished site.

It is aimed at developers and site maintainers who want a structured content workflow alongside static-site output. The repository includes an example project to explore, and the official website source is available in a separate repository.

Key Features

• Generates individual HTML pages from a website project.
• Includes a built-in admin UI for working with site content.
• Provides a minimal desktop app.
• Includes an example project showcasing a range of features.
• Offers a development server for previewing a project.
• Builds admin front-end resources as part of the Python distribution build process.

Use Cases

• Developers building a content-driven website that can be hosted as static files.
• Site maintainers who want an admin interface for managing content rather than editing every page by hand.
• Teams that want to preview a website locally before publishing it.
• Developers evaluating static-site workflows who want to explore a working example project.

Getting Started

See the installation guide and quickstart for user setup. For development, the README describes the Python, npm, and uv requirements and how to run the example project. The source is at lektor/lektor.

Alternatives

• nikola: Nikola is a Python static-site generator with themes and plugins, but it does not center on Lektor's built-in content admin interface.
• pelican: Pelican builds static sites from Markdown, reStructuredText, and HTML files, rather than offering Lektor's built-in content admin interface.

Considerations

• The development setup requires Python 3.10 or later, npm, and uv.
• Building the admin front-end assets uses npm. The README documents a build option for environments where npm is unavailable, but those builds may omit the build hooks.
• Lektor produces static pages, so projects that need server-side request handling will require a separate service or a different approach.