An introduction to Static Site Generators
Let's build a (content) website
Option 1 : static site starting from scratch
- Easy to get started
- Good performance out of the box
- Easy to deploy / host
- Good to learn the fundamentals
- Time consuming
- Not a great Developer Experience (DX)
- Hard to scale / maintain
- How do you manage your content ?
Option 2 : use a "traditional" CMS
client
web server
content editor
database server
- Easy to get a "full" website up quickly
- Nice editing experience for your content
- Community / ecosystem to help you
- Deployment & hosting can be complex
- Security can be an issue
- Need to code backend + frontend parts
- You just wanted a banana, but what you got was a gorilla holding the banana and the entire jungle
Option 3 : use a platform
- No coding required !
- Same advantages as the "classic CMS"
- (Very) limited customizability
- You don't own your content
Option 4 : use a static site generator
client
web server
content editor
database server
developer
rebuild site
- Great performance
- Good security
- Easy deployment & hosting
- Good DX (templating + clean separation of code and content)
- Poor content-editing experience out of the box
- Dynamic functionalities (e.g. Auth) can be complex to implement