Yes, indeed Wordpress has been a miracle for millions -anybody could start a blog or any site with no coding knowledge-, their window to the world! A small grocery store? Add a colorful theme and you’re good to go! A writer-to-be? Add a few plugins and you can broadcast your thoughts to the world.
But, as time went on, the web landscape kept evolving immensely, and the humble WP couldn’t keep up with it… unless you choke it with 50 plugins that try to modernize WP to current requirements, gaining weight and losing speed in the process…
Currently, there are important standards related to how Google indexes your site, how it should display on a mobile screen, how to take advantage of the browser cache, how to modularize it so it can be iterated and scaled in the future… and so on.
The web is, nowadays, a very rich landscape, with mature technologies that developers love to use. So you better answer that door, because the future is now!
Enter Gatsby
Gatsby is a framework that has all the tools needed for a developer to build a fast (and I mean super fast) website or web app.
It’s not the only one, but it’s currently one of the most popular, built on React, the most loved web framework, rising even faster in 2019, with its use of GraphQL, after a round of funding. Fiuuuh…
Without getting technical, we can say this: It uses all the latest web technologies and standards out of the box, so in the end, you have a very lightweight, fast and beautiful website.
I know, only developers have the knowledge to use this tool and code away to create that kind of website, but here is the secret:
Gatsby is used to generating a website, not the content. So it connects to a Content Management System, which you can easily use. Want to add e-commerce? it simply connects to one like Shopify. So you, the entrepreneur, you the startup, you the shopkeeper, you the writer can focus on the content, the product… what matters you the most!
A real-life example
Impossible Foods (maker of the Impossible™ Burger) was amidst exponential growth as it took the world by storm.
They needed a website that could offer a first-class experience to all stakeholders — from content editors and IT staff to restaurants and consumers. These challenges and requirements led the Impossible Foods team to adopt a “Content Mesh” approach to their website architecture, with Contentful as a headless CMS, Shopify for e-commerce, and Gatsby.
The development team created reusable components in Gatsby and sourced content from “modules” created within Contentful. They also connected the site to Shopify to power the checkout experience, as well as display in-stock products, descriptions, and prices. Content producers were now free to create and update content on the site, simply by using the editing experience with Contentful and Shopify. This new workflow dramatically reduced the turnaround time for new announcements to be published on the website.
The Impossible Foods team raved that their new architecture enables its content strategy to keep pace with the acceleration of their business.
Taken from the Gatsby blog.
Farewell…
…old tech. And with that, I wish you an extraordinary 2020 and invite you to be bold with your ventures, we will definitely be there along the way!
PS: If you want to get technical, here is a detailed comparison of Gatsby vs Wordpress ;)
