I feel great that all of my posts are now safely saved in version control and markdown. It’s a relief for me to know that they’re no longer an HTML mess inside of a MySQL database, but markdown files which are easy to read, write, edit, share, and backup.
Good feeling of switching to GatsbyJS
However, I realized that a static site generator like Gatsby utilizes the power of code/data splitting, pre-loading, pre-caching, image optimization, and all sorts of performance enhancements that would be difficult or impossible to do with straight HTML.
Benefits of mixing HTML/CSS with some JavaScript (GatsbyJS):
I’ll give you the basics of what I did in case you also want to make the switch.
(check the text below this highlight for a great guide of migrating from WordPress to GatsbyJS)
A few things I really like about Gatsby
Main benefits of GatsbyJS:
I had over 100 guides and tutorials to migrate, and in the end I was able to move everything in 10 days, so it was far from the end of the world.
If you're smart, you can move from WordPress to GatsbyJS in ~ 10 days
There are a lot of static site generators to choose from. Jekyll, Hugo, Next, and Hexo are some of the big ones, and I’ve heard of and looked into some interesting up-and-coming SSGs like Eleventy as well.
Other statis site generators to consider, apart from GatsbyJS:
There is a good amount of prerequisite knowledge required to set up a Gatsby site - HTML, CSS, JavaScript, ES6, Node.js development environment, React, and GraphQL are the major ones.
There's a bit of technologies to be familiar with before setting up a GatsbyJS blog:
but you can be fine with the Gatsby Getting Started Tutorial
Gatsby is SEO friendly – it is part of the JAMStack after all!
With Gatsby you don't have to worry about SEO
Gatsby is a React based framework which utilises the powers of Webpack and GraphQL to bundle real React components into static HTML, CSS and JS files. Gatsby can be plugged into and used straight away with any data source you have available, whether that is your own API, Database or CMS backend (Spoiler Alert!).
Good GatsbyJS explanation in a single paragraph
The combination of WordPress, React, Gatsby and GraphQL is just that - fun
Intriguing combination of technologies.
Keep an eye on the post author, who is going to discuss the technologies in the next writings