The first generation of static site generators were pretty simple — they took static content files, combined then with template files and turned them into static HTML/CSS/JS files. The second generation were largely built upon JavaScript frameworks like React and Vue and did much more. They had tools to pull data from remote endpoints, manage data and state, split code into modules, asset management, plugins and much more.
These added features generally didn't come free though, as Jamstack apps, touted for their performance, could become bloated with JavaScript if the developer wasn't cautious. It's not yet clear whether the rising popularity of tools like Eleventy and Astro may represent a third generation of tools, but they are aiming to offer an interesting combination of the benefits of second generation tools with the lightweight output of the first.
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Discover Modern Web Development Tools and Trends
Whether you are an experienced or new Jamstack developer, this site is an outstanding reference resource you’ll want to save. It has detailed comparisons of an extensive list of SSGs, headless CMS, and deployment platforms.
Bejamas
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Jamstack Hosting Platforms: The Underdogs
Hard to imagine companies the size of Cloudflare, Digital Ocean and Microsoft being described as underdogs, but they are definitely the less obvious options when it comes to Jamstack deployments.
Raymond Camden
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✂︎ Tools and Resources
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Eleventy Serverless - A talk recording by Zach Leatherman from the recent inaugural Eleventy Meetup.
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Bridgetown 0.21.1 - This release includes Webpack 5 support, moves from Babel to ESBuild and more.
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Hugo 0.86.0 - This release includes cascading config values and an easier way to identify the current menu item.
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Integrating Eleventy with GitHub Flat Data
Flat Data lets your GitHub repository download data from an API and store it in your repository on a scheduled basis. Ray shows how to set it up and use it in an Eleventy project.
Raymond Camden
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