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Jamstacked Issue 38

Just how do you compare SSGs now?

Published: Sep 2, 2021

Your update on all things Jamstack

#​38 — September 2, 2021
✦ web version

Our choice of SSG dramatically impacts how we experience developing with the Jamstack but it can be very difficult to make a fair assessment of which to choose. Once upon a time, I built a comparison of different SSGs by creating the same basic site over in each of them. But back then, we were largely just comparing the configuration and templating, as the core functionality of an SSG was the same.

Today's SSGs vary dramatically - does it even make sense to compare how you build a site using Hugo and Next.js for example? I'd love to hear from you. How did you make the choice and/or how do you recommend developers evaluate their choice of SSG? Tweet about it and @ me: @remotesynth. I hope to talk about this more in upcoming issues.

— Brian Rinaldi

↘︎ What's Good

Jamstack CMS: The Past, The Present and The Future
I love articles like this because I think it is important to understand how a technology evolved to where it is today to help understand the best path forward. Mike covers the evolution of headless CMS and then even looks at how they compare with other popular CMS tools.

Mike Neumegen

How to Separate Content from Website Code
This is one of the core aspects central to static site generators since the beginning - keeping the display of the content separate from the content using templates and even splitting templates into components.

Sean C Davis

Using Liquid Blocks in Eleventy Layouts
An interesting exploration into how Eleventy processes templates and how to support blocks that can be defined in Liquid templates (as well as a separate workaround that accomplishes the same overall goal).

Raymond Camden

State Management In Next.js
Managing state in a Next.js application can get really tricky very quickly. This looks at some patterns to help avoid complexity in common scenarios and avoid “provider hell.”

Átila Fassina

✂︎ Tools and Resources

❖ Tidbits

Five Reasons I'm Excited about Astro
There’s been a lot of buzz about Astro lately. Sean breaks down some of the key features of Astro that have him excited after being initially skeptical.

Sean C Davis

Forcing Your Hugo Builds to Crash, and Why You Probably Should
Using the errorf and warnf functions in Hugo (which I’ll admit I didn’t even know existed) to help identify potential build errors that can occur during the CI/CD process.

Mani Kumar

The Jamstack Identity Crisis: An Even-Handed Overview
There’s been a lot of debate about how we redefine Jamstack to accommodate changing toolsets and architectures. Jaden gives a good overview of the various positions.

Jaden Baptista

Frontity Is Joining Automattic
Frontity was a React framework designed for integrating headless Wordpress. They are now officially part of the Wordpress family with the acquisition. Want to know how it works? Chris Coyier has a post about building a headless Wordpress site with Frontity.

Frontity

Thank you for reading. I'll catch you next time — Brian