
#MIDDLEMAN STATIC SITE GENERATOR#
In fact it’s much more than just a Static Site Generator it’s got options for server rendering, API supports, route pre-fetching, smart building and many more functions. Next.js by Vercel is the most popular open-source ReactJS framework right now. Here are our top static website generators. The Website Generators offers different options to connect to these CMS systems and in the build phase they will generate most of the static files of the website based on the CMS content. Usually, the content of these Jamstack sites comes from a Content Management System (CMS) also written in JavaScript, which is independent of the frontend framework you will use to generate the static site. These are the libraries, tools and frameworks (mostly Open Source) that help developers to create prebuilt markups. This, in turn, has created the need for Static Site Generators(SSGs). Also, the prebuilt nature of the pages means they perform like static pages, wherever possible. We don’t compute and create them on the server side and then send them to the client with a request instead, we host the prebuilt version of the static HTML markup on a CDN (Content Delivery Network) and serve it from there when a client requests it.ĬDNs are faster and more secure in nature than regular servers, hence they serve pages much faster. The word ‘prebuilt’ means that all templated markups are created at the time of application deployment. Let’s zoom into the prebuilt markup part first. The architecture is based on three key features: In late 2016, Jamstack arrived as an architectural concept. A Traditional Client-Server Architecture Enter Jamstack Users would request a page (resource) from the server, and the server would perform the computation, produce the required markups and send them to the user as a response. Under the original model, developers would write code, test, build the app and ship it to a server. What’s more, the traditional client-server workflow for a dynamic website is slow – and with each new innovation, it’s getting slower. As developers, we’ve needed to take on the role of managing servers and databases ourselves, whether it be upgrading, patching a security fix, or performing general maintenance issues. However, this has created problems in the traditional client-server architecture. When the triumvirate of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript took the web world by storm, we entered a client-server architecture paradigm. The pages needed better markup support, sleeker styles and more dynamic content.

So the old static websites, served from a ISP-run web server, have been rendered obsolete. And with that growth, consumers have shown increase in contributing and creating digital content. Their role, and use cases, in our society have continued to expand. Since the dawn of the internet (at least in popular consciousness) in the mid-90s, websites have developed not just from a technological perspective, but from a cultural one. The evolution of websites has been a gradual, but relentless process. First of all, let’s consider why static site generators are so crucial…

But we’ve identified five that deserve special mention, due to their massive popularity in the Jamstack and web developer community. It was a tough job to pick five – more than 300 generators exist today, and most of them are superb. In this article we’ll talk about best static site generators that have been ruling the Jamstack world for a while now. This is where static site generators come in. So we need a new technology to generate static sites, befitting the resources and innovative spirit of the digital revolution. However, the needs of creators and consumers have changed dramatically since then.

Back in those dim and distant days the internet only had a few contributors, so managing and maintaining a static website was fairly hassle-free, they use to have a couple of static html files. In fact they’ve been around since the era of Web 1.0.
