One thing I thankful for though is that it gave me a new-found love for the simple and non-flashy libs/tooling.
In the end, I wound up writing my own static site generator.
https://github.com/pauldotknopf/statik
You may say to yourself "So you just wrote your own Gatsby!?"
No, I didn't. I wrote a thin lib that you can register endpoints and extract them to disk. It does absolutely nothing else. The idea is that I will wrote my own markdown rendering, navigation, html/css, etc for each project. "But what about the time it takes to implement all the features you need!" The time it takes to implement these minor things take far less time in the long run, and I will never have to be in an endless fight with the tooling to get simple tree navigation. Every feature I implement is exactly what I need, no more, no less.
Sure, it isn't as cool as React, webpack, etc. But I'm a lot happier.
However, there were some features that I simply could not add to it. Features that if I didn't have the tooling bogging me down, I could implement in 10 minutes.
https://github.com/gohugoio/hugo/issues/3659
I can't fault Hugo for that GH issue though. The author's response is valid.
I know I sound grumpy. Hugo is great. It is a far better option than Gatsby. The features that it has are very simple and straightforward (no graph nodes/graphql/webpack-esque abstractions). I actually highly recommend Hugo.
edit: To add onto my original comment, I encourage people to read this blog post.
There is way too much ceremony.
Another thing I like is how they leverage GraphQL. I am not a fan to use it as a back end language but for a query tool existing only on the front it all makes sense and it's really effective. You can easily build query to generate all kind of pages and contents automatically. And that from all kind of sources (markdown, CSV).
There are many other great stuff like their source/transform plugin to be able to query on any (if the plugin is made) source.[1] Or having to only learn 2 API call (onCreateNode, onCreatePage) and GraphQL to start to do many of the biggest things... Or I can talk about how when building the project Gatsby makes all the call to any headless CMS to retrieve all the data to leverage them while still being able to create a static website at the same time...[2]
Finally Netlify provides a dead simple way to host your project. You just need to create an account and link your Github repo on their platform and every time your master will change your website will be automatically deployed. Ho and it's free...
[1] https://www.gatsbyjs.org/docs/source-plugin-tutorial/
[2] https://www.gatsbyjs.org/docs/wordpress-source-plugin-tutori...
I'm deep down the Vue.JS rabbit hole and can really appreciate this stuff
Out the box reactJS with the best practices already? maybe next project!
It was also fun to see my site achieve 100% with ease on Chrome's Lighthouse tests. I still have no idea what kind of impact it has on SEO, but every little bit helps.
Thanks to all who contributed!
[1] https://cu.sg
My thoughts:
Pros:
* I love React, so Gatsby was a natural extension for me. It's very helpful to use the same toolchain/mindset in most places.
* I don't have to learn/forget/relearn all of the stupid bugs in Wordpress/Drupal/etc. Gatsby has some shortcomings, but in general if you've worked with React, you already know where the shortcomings and limitations are.
Cons:
* Deployment isn't terribly straight forward if you have a custom use case. I ended up manually building and serving with a small node script.
* It can be very, very (too easy) to accidentally share a server side ENV variable into the JS build. You have to be very careful not to leak an important key.
The best things is using data at build time rather than run time. Which make everything so fast for the end user.
Looks like Gatsby has raised a ~4m seed. I'm curious: how does Gatsby (the company) make/plan to make revenue from Gatsby (the library)? Support, hosting, or something else?
We launched our product, Gatsby Preview, into alpha in July https://www.gatsbyjs.org/blog/2018-07-17-announcing-gatsby-p...
A lot of people really love building sites with headless CMSs and Gatsby. Gatsby Preview gives content editors live preview of changes they're making in the CMS on a real version of the site.
We launched with support for Contentful and are adding support for other headless CMSs along with traditional CMSs running in headless mode like Drupal and WordPress.
Also check out our launch blog post https://www.gatsbyjs.org/blog/2018-05-24-launching-new-gatsb...
The maintainers are very active and responsive and the project itself does many things...just right.
Love the simplicity and way you’ve refined the marketing around your app.
http://Graphene-Python.org/ is still using Gatsby after 2 years from the first release, keep up the good work! :)
Nothing wrong with having a chance to make a website with your favorite front-end framework, but when you've been doing web apps with Javascript and websites with only a CSS framework if any, these generators just feel like a bit too much. Not everything needs to be an "app", if you catch my drift.
If you want to make a website that's blazing fast and you happen to know React well, Gatsby really is your best bet.
Reason why WP is because its still the best editing experience and very simple of anyone to get started with.
I'm currently reasearching different workflows and tools where you can transition from a landing page to a saas without changing the dev environment that much.
The closest thing I've found is in the Laravel/Vue ecosystem, where you can start with a static site generator (Jigsaw), and progress into a full Laravel application from there, as it uses the same stuff under the hood minus the backend.
