< Back to archive

Jamstacked Issue 42

The static site generator race is on

Published: Oct 28, 2021

Your update on all things Jamstack

#​42 — October 28, 2021
✦ web version

It definitely feels like the SSG race is on! In just a matter of weeks, we've had major releases of Gatsby, Next.js, Nuxt and Eleventy. In the cases of Gatbsy and Nuxt, new support for SSR and "deferred rendering" - my personal term for the combo of Incremental Static Regeneration (ISR), Distributed Persistent Rendering (DPR) and Deferred Static Generation (DSG) - brings them to a sort of feature parity with Next.js.

Meanwhile, Next.js is attempting to address a major issue that especially plagues JavaScript-based static site generators (SSG): slow build times. Their new Rust-based compiler aims to dramatically cut build times. Plus, the release of Vercel's Edge Functions continues the push by deployment providers to move dynamic logic to the "edge" for better application performance.

— Brian Rinaldi

↘︎ What's Good

Next.js 12 Released
The latest version announced at Next.js Conf includes a Rust compiler for faster refresh and builds, native ES modules support and middleware support, which uses Vercel's newly announced Edge Functions.

The Vercel Team

What’s New in Gatsby 4: Now Fully Released
Gatsby 4 became official last week with Deferred Static Generation (DSG or basically Gatsby’s take on ISR/DPR) and server-side rendering (SSR). Also, check InfoQ's coverage of what's new.

Jeff James

Building The SSG I’ve Always Wanted: An 11ty, Vite And JAM Sandwich
Slinkity is a plugin that brings component frameworks and the “islands architecture” to Eleventy. Ben Holmes explains why he ended up building it in the first place. The post even inspired Bryan Robinson to give it a try.

Ben Holmes

The Semantics of Jamstack
As Jamstack has evolved, it has challenged our longstanding assumptions about what is or isn’t considered a Jamstack site. Mike explores the debate over the meaning of the term and where it may be headed.

Mike Neumegen

✂︎ Tools and Resources

  • Simply Stateful Serverless – Serverless functions play a key role in Jamstack, but dealing with their statelessness can be a challenge. This free meetup today at 1PM ET (GMT-4) looks at how to make them stateful.
  • Update to Netlify's On-Demand Builders – On-demand builders are what enable deferred rendering (aka Distributed Persistent Rendering) on Netlify and they've been updated to persistence across global edge nodes.
  • Tina Now Supports MDX – Tina CMS has added support for editing MDX documents allowing you to embed components in content managed pages.
  • Creating Your Own Bragdoc With Eleventy – A bragdoc is a place for you to brag about your work. Emily Leung recreates bragdocs.com using Eleventy.

❖ Tidbits

Eleventy 1.0 - Dynamic Ignores
Ray has been exploring all the new features of Eleventy 1.0 on his blog. This post covers a small feature he requested that allows you to ignore certain files during the build depending on your environment.

Raymond Camden

Converting A Simple HTML Site to Use Eleventy
A great post for anyone looking to get started with Eleventy, it walks through converting existing HTML into an Eleventy site.

Cassey Lottman

Build Times in a Statically Generated Site
Build times can become an issue for almost any SSG but this post mainly covers issues and useful solutions related to improving the build time and avoiding errors with Gatsby.

Derek Foster

The Pros & Cons of Jamstack Architecture and What the Future Holds for It
Looking past the emphasis on the JAM acronym, this post does do a good job of laying out the business case for Jamstack and some of the challenges it faces while talking to Matt Biilmann, Sean C. Davis and Marcelo Lewin.

Dom Nicastro

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