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Jamstacked Issue 39

Thank you Frank

Published: Sep 16, 2021

Your update on all things Jamstack

#​39 — September 16, 2021
✦ web version

I want to start today by remembering Frank Taillandier. Many of you may not know Frank, but he was a consistent contributor to the Jamstack community and ecosystem over the years, not just through his work at Forestry but also through his contributions to Jekyll. I only knew Frank through interactions on 'The New Dynamic' Slack community. I recall that we often passionately disagreed on topics and yet he would also not hesitate to help me out whenever I needed it.

Frank's passing has also brought up some questions about the future of Jekyll, which I'll address below. For now, I just want to say thanks, Frank.

Brian Rinaldi

↘︎ What's Good

Jekyll in Hiding? Maintainer Claimed Engine Behind GitHub Pages was 'RIP' Since 2018, but Development Continues
This is going to be a bit long of a summary, sorry. Frank’s passing spurred some concern from Jared White, creator of Bridgetown, which began as a fork of Jekyll. He cited previous comments from Frank on 'The New Dynamic' Slack that Jekyll development had ceased (note that the folks behind Jekyll also released a statement thanking Frank for his contributions). While Jared is correct that new feature development has been absent in Jekyll, The Register notes here that work continues on the core, with commits as recent as a couple of weeks ago. The way I see it, Jekyll may not have kept up with the latest Jamstack trends, but it still gets the job done for static site development, so the lack of new features does not necessarily mean the end of the tool.

The Register

Why Decoupled Architectures Now Make Sense for WordPress
It wasn’t that long ago that Jamstack Conf hosted a Matt (the CEO of Netlify) vs. Matt (the creator of Wordpress) chat, in which Matt Mullenweg was skeptical (at best) of the headless and Jamstack trends. Nonetheless, the Wordpress development world has been trending towards a headless architecture, best illustrated by Automattic’s acquisition of Frontity. It’s worth noting though, that while this trend may benefit those who want to use Wordpress as a backend in the Jamstack, it does not mean Mullenweg or Automattic have changed their minds regarding Jamstack specifically.

Richard MacManus

✂︎ Tools and Resources

  • Netlify Becomes Astro's Official Hosting Partner – Interesting to see Netlify get so strongly behind the Astro project.
  • Serious Jamstack - A free, 58 page ebook on building Jamstack apps from Kentico (registration required).
  • PRPL – A new, traditional static site generator focused entirely on converting content to HTML.
  • JekyllEx – A tool that lets you manage and edit content on your Jekyll site using a mobile device.

❖ Tidbits

Jekyll Doesn't do Components? Liar!
Using includes and layouts in Jekyll can be functionally equivalent to components in many cases, though Katie does spell out many of the limitations.

Katie

Using SWR React Hooks With Next.js’ Incremental Static Regeneration (ISR)
SWR is a library from Vercel that can revalidate data on intervals and this can be combined with ISR to update data on the cached page served to the client. P.S. the author is still in high school!

Sam Poder

Power Your Astro Site with Local and Remote Data
Strategies for consuming data from both local files and from an API using Astro.

Aftab Alam

Why Git is the Future of Content Management
The title is a bit click-baity, but overall this is a good and fair overview of the pros and cons of using a Git-based CMS.

Mike Neumegen

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