Thoughts or recommendations for a static site generator?

Rikmeister

Rikmeister

Rikmeister

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296
Hi everyone,

I want to make my first foray into usins a static website generator. I'm comfortable with coding and website creation from back in the day, so don't mind that a lot of it will be new to me.

I've had a look on Jamstack https://jamstack.org/generators/ and I think sticking to one of the big, highly-rated, well supported generators would be a good idea (at least as an introduction to Jamstack), so I'm considering Hugh, Gatsby and Jekyll, maybe Next.js too.

Would appreciate thoughts on the above (Hugh, Gatsby, Jekyll and Next.js), or any other suggestions.

N.B. there's no particular project or other limitations (like timescale).

Thanks in advance.
 
I'm a WordPress dev but I'm learning Jamstack style development now because it's the future of websites. The speed benefit from using a headless cms is quite noticeable, especially with a React/Next.js front end.

I've been using the free version of Strapi to make my object/collections. It's really really easy if your a decent coder, but imo it's really limited from a CMS point of view, like not having built in slugs or navigation option, page parents, etc that I'm so used to.

What I've come to realise is that WordPress cms using a GraphlQl plugin gives you everything you need for a RestApi/React front end.

I haven't tried Contentful or anything else, but since Strapi seems to be so popular I was surprised how simple it is.
Maybe that's the point, after you'd started to make it more complex, you can roll out your own version via npm with all your added components already built.
 
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Thanks for your suggestion ChroniC. I hadn't heard of Strapi before, I'll certainly put Strapi + GraphlQl plugin on the short list if I'm looking for a CMS in future.

For now I've decided to go with the Svelte framework and Sveltekit builder https://kit.svelte.dev/

My intention was to go with one of the big well established generators but Svelte looks like it has everything I need, has a reasonable learning curve, and is growing fast.
 
Yeah looked into svelte a colleague of mine thinks it's gona be the next big thing, I chose to go down the Next.js/React front end route because like VHS vs Betamax, React is far and away the most popular option at the moment and I was learning it for possible career progression.
 
I am a big fan of Next.js as you can choose between Statically Generated/Server side rendering etc on a page by page basis. Have heard lots of good things about Svelte and Sveltekit but not tried it out.

If you are just starting out you might find that there is a lot more help resources for Next than Svelte at the moment if that is important to you.

A big part of my decision was what I was already familiar with, in my case JS and React. If I was a Go programmer I would probably have chosen Hugo

JavaScript/React - NextJs,Gatsby
JavaScript/Vue - Nuxt, Gridsome
JavaScript/Svelte - SvelteKit
JavaScript (vanilla) - Eleventy
Go - Hugo
Ruby - Jekyll
 
Nuxt & Next are probably the biggest and most documented (due to Vue & React being the front runing JS frameworks). If you are fancying a career switch, experience in both will stand you in good stead. Heard good things about Svelte though, especially for smaller projects.

Not touched Next for a little while (I really should pick up my old personal project) but Nuxt has just had a major release with Vue3 support.
 
I'm a WordPress dev but I'm learning Jamstack style development now because it's the future of websites. The speed benefit from using a headless cms is quite noticeable, especially with a React/Next.js front end.
I've been using the free version of Strapi to make my object/collections. It's really really easy if your a decent coder, but imo it's really limited from a CMS point of view, like not having built in slugs or navigation option, page parents, etc that I'm so used to.
What I've come to realise is that WordPress cms using a GraphlQl plugin gives you everything you need for a RestApi/React front end.
Click to expand...

You're probably right about it. But talking of Jamstack, don't you think that it will show it's best for the nearest couple of months, and then - will become less and less popular, as always happen with all the new frameworks? Article with a detailed comparison of angular vs react vs vue can open your eyes on some new methods, that you can use building your own website, even combining different frameworks.
 
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No not really. It's gona be very hard to topple WordPress obviously the plugin library alone is the reason for that, but I would guess they are probably secretly working on moving to this line of development.
The difference in speed is quite noticeably, but like you could be right. Like beta max and VHS, if enough people don't get on board or it's not easy enough, it might not take off.

I'm definitely learning it better to get on board before I'm left behind.
 
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