Developing blazing-fast websites and apps requires a robust framework. GatsbyJS is the right platform to initiate such a development.
Web performance is one of the strongest trends of 2024. Waiting for a website for a longer time period will only lead to losing more opportunities. Even a second difference will make your visitors move to your competitors’ websites. The loading time and your website’s content are the two most important factors that lead to a good user experience.
Visitors are now used to getting their desired information immediately after requesting it and this has become a trend that will surely last longer.
Static websites may seem to be like a step backward from today’s feature-packed dynamic sites, but many companies are switching to static site generators to enhance their site performance and also complement their headless CMSs.
One most popular site generator in particular is GatsbyJS, which has recently attracted attention a lot. And it is not only because of its growing popularity but also because that React is preferred by about 60% of the developers over any other front-end frameworks.
What is a Static Site Generator?
These generators are quite the opposite of the popular dynamic sites and in these, when the user enters a website, a request is sent by the server to the database so that the content is downloaded that is needed at the moment. After that, the data is soon displayed on the website as an HTML file.
Whatever be the process, it takes time and can be slowed down more with multiple request that are sent at one time.
Static site generators don’t use the database layer, but they use the static files to create the site in the browser, and not the server as the user enters each webpage.
This means that if the person on your site wants to view the contact us page, it is not being rendered. But what if you go server-less? You will be able to create a lightweight website that takes less time to create it and even maintain as you don’t have to consider databases.
The front-end solutions like static site generators raised the popularity while getting more and more developers each year.
What is GatsbyJS:
According to its website, Gatsby is an open-source framework that is based on React that helps developers create fast websites and applications. It is available for free and is a popular static site generator that makes it easy to create interactive websites using React, a front-end development framework.
This means that the companies can launch simple and high-performance websites, PWAs and microsites easily. Gatsby supports progressive image loading and responsive image loading also.
Why top brands are choosing to use GatsbyJS?
The reason behind the popularity of Gatsby is because of React on which it is based. There are resources that are readily available for the developers to work with the React framework effectively and in addition to the strong technical foundation of Gatsby, it is also free and comes with well documentation and has a strong community.
The Gatsby community helps to make it easier for a number of companies to get started easily and even launch their sites. With Gatsby, developers can easily jump in without much technical knowledge since they are already well equipped and have knowledge of the tech stack Gatsby.
This means that the companies can easily save significant time and money that is required when recruiting fresh staff members and training their developers. Gatsby can be easily extended with additional functionalities that include responsive images, source data from the CMS data mark-up formats that adds third party services and help the framework Gatsby meets the latest web standards by default.
Solving common web development problems with Gatsby
Using Gatsby can solve a lot of problems. There can be plenty of problems like SEO issues, content management, or a page speed that is not great for users. As it is known popularly, an average page speed has an impact on the branding of the site as per Core Web Vitals update for Google. However, Gatsby can solve these problems. Here is how the framework can help resolve these issues.
Optimising website speed and performance
The importance of page speed is well known to Gatsby developers and therefore the framework offers a number of ways to improve the same. There are certain tips that can help improve the same, like:
- Reducing third-party scripts and blocking calls
- Working with JavaScript bundle site
- Looking for all pointers for possible optimisation
- Reviewing resources and CDN caching configuration
Working with Gatsby makes a lot of these things easier in addition to bringing compatibility and various performance optimisation capabilities.
Gatsby plugins play a crucial role in optimising various aspects. Consequently, in documentation, you’ll frequently encounter recommendations such as, “If you’re utilizing tool X, enhance speed, performance, and overall optimisation by incorporating the corresponding Gatsby plugin.
Simplified content management
When adopting the optimal headless CMS strategy with Gatsby, it is important to consider your business’s unique requirements and aesthetic preferences. Gatsby provides robust support and compatibility, making the decision primarily driven by preferences rather than any external demands or obligations. Editing content with these tools is exceptionally straightforward, ensuring a user-friendly experience for your non-technical staff.
Added to that, Gatsby also offers SEO support that enhances the possibilities to use a number of strategies with improved tools and technologies. It all contributes to improving the overall content management strategy as a whole.
Improved SEO capabilities
As one of the most important parameters, SEO is helpful in the customisation of online visibility of a website. Online visibility is an important factor to let a website reach to the audience. Gatsby helps in enhancing SEO capabilities to a greater extent, which ultimately contributes to improved visibility. Gatsby is static and therefore it gives the required capability of getting content indexed at a rapid pace resulting in enhancing the online visibility of a website.
Gatsby extraordinary capabilities don’t mean you don’t need to use other rewarding SEO techniques. Added to all this the framework Gatsby also helps to offer a superior user experience and a higher interactivity level to users. Other factors like dwell and session time are also easy to manage with the help of this framework.
Advantages of Gatsby
Here are a few advantages of Gatsby!
Enhanced documentation
Gatsby stands out with its extensive documentation, encompassing fundamental aspects such as installation, page and post creation, and site deployment. This resource also delves into a detailed exploration of Gatsby mechanics, offering valuable insights into the tool’s inner workings.
Moreover, the Gatsby team consistently publishes fresh tutorials and guides on their website, ensuring users can effortlessly stay informed about the latest updates. In essence, the thorough documentation stands as a major highlight to offer some key advantage of using Gatsby.
Platform security
Gatsby stands out as a highly secure technology stack crafted by experts, creating a formidable barrier against significant websites that are easy to hack. Its robust security design minimises common errors, making Gatsby websites less attractive targets for malicious activities.
Furthermore, Gatsby adopts a serverless architecture, significantly reducing its vulnerability surface. The serverless model involves deploying the web application on a cloud infrastructure managed by a third-party provider. This dynamic setup eliminates a fixed server or operating system, making it challenging for attackers to pinpoint vulnerabilities or exploits. Additionally, the serverless architecture allows the application to scale automatically based on traffic, thereby lowering the risk of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks
Performance
Gatsby, a React framework with a strong emphasis on performance, is designed for constructing static websites and web applications. It utilises contemporary technologies like CSS Modules and webpack to enhance performance and shrink bundle sizes. Notably, Gatsby seamlessly incorporates server-side rendering and code splitting, positioning it as an excellent option for applications where performance is crucial.
Furthermore, Gatsby includes built-in image optimisation to decrease asset bundle sizes, coupled with the capability for lazy loading images, providing additional performance benefits out of the box.
Robust ecosystem
The framework, Gatsby is managed by one of the most vibrant community proving it the right backend support it requires. The community keeps on releasing new plugins so that developers can have the required flexibility of choosing from a wide array of resources.
As the platform is built on React, it helps developers to create high-performing websites with improved interfaces. In addition to all this, as explained above, Gatsby has a robust plugin and theme ecosystem as well that makes it much more popular for the developers. All this adds to the exceptional functionality of Gatsby framework.
Styling
A complex styling pattern makes the entire interface complex for developers. There may be specific development issues that may ask developers to scroll through an extensive range of lines of code and end up utilising “! important” to be able to see the styling that has been added.
As an added support to Gatsby, there is SCSS, and CSS-in-JavaScript libraries that ensure managing the Stylesheets in a much better way. The setup for the same is extremely easy to handle through a plugin or a package.
Extensibility
Being one of the most popular frameworks for developers, Gatsby is capable of consuming different APIs and data sources.
Gatsby ability to take data from various sources makes it the right framework for businesses looking for a platform that can easily integrate with other similar platforms within the business with the website. For example, if a business has a specific platform for measuring its performance and this information is intended to be displayed for the clients to view publicly, this could easily be done through the website.
Edge rendering
As a technique, Edge rendering refers to the phenomenon where custom JavaScript is combined with the website in order to communicate to the browser the value to return based on the requesting server’s location. This means that people viewing a website from different locations will have different content rendering for different locations.
Therefore, with Edge rendering, the process is being held at the edge locations near to the users, which is very different from client-side rendering. Before being delivered, the webpages are being prerendered at distributed edge locations that are the areas near the users.
The factors that make Gatsby a great solution for companies
Gatsby fits best with headless CMS and many companies find that the headless CMS is separate from the serving of the site. This means that the CMS can easily store the website content and the SSG can pull the content from there when the static site is created.
This can be automated to trigger when there is any change in the content within the CMS. If you want to manage your content easily by non-developers, a headless CMS should be the only solution like WordPress, Sanity, or NetlifyCMS.
Without a headless CMS, the content would be managed in some kind of raw format, which would be left with little options needed for updating the content. This makes the site extremely fast, but the marketers are left with very little option for updating the site content.
Performance is a common motivator of SSG adoption and since the static site is pre-rendered, the content will load and display faster than any dynamic site and this is extremely crucial for a seamless digital experience.
The Bottom Line
To conclude, it is important to consider all the available frameworks before choosing any modern web development framework. While Gatsby is an excellent choice that offers all the above-explained benefits, it is still important to have extended research for choosing the right candidate for your business.
Ultimately, the best decision is to evaluate the complete business requirements with all the intended goals as well as the aim of the business in mind in order to select the right framework. Gatsby having a number of advantages can thus prove to be the right business choice when considering further growth and expansion of the business.
