stackbit: fastest way to your jamstack

as you may have heard, jamstack is the future of the web, now the only question is, how the hell do i get a jamstack?

but before we get to that, we need to discuss what a jamstack is, here's what the internet says:

JAMstack stands for JavaScript, APIs, and Markup. The term was coined by Mathias Biilmann to describe a modern web development architecture based on client-side JavaScript, reusable APIs, and prebuilt Markup.

that sounds all well and good but what good does that do me? that also apparently tells us there:

Picture a CMS-based solution. For every visitor, the web app would have to generate a number of backend database queries to gather the information needed to generate a web page and send it back to the user.

With a JAMstack app, you serve generated HTML instead of rendering documents live on the server. This ensures faster loading times, reduces security risks and is a solution that is easy to integrate with a CDN.

But the real beauty of the JAMstack approach is perhaps how easy it is to pull in content from third-party APIs. Because no matter how well-crafted your pre-generated pages are, you will probably have to pull in additional data from external sources at some point. And this is where Contentful comes into the picture with a JAMstack-ready CMS.

ok cool but how do i get to this jamstack now?

very easy. the answer is stackbit.

Stackbit is the first open, complete platform for the Jamstack — it's the easiest way to get started with the best tools for the modern web.

get started bois..

first of all we have to sign up on stackbit.

then just log in to the stackbit dashboard and create a new project. now you just choose a prefabricated theme, of course you can also search on GitHub for other themes, there are now really many that also support stackbit, but normally one is enough to just use the e.g. Gatsby as a static site generator.

choose a static site generator that your jamstack will use in the current project

now the same fun with the selection of your cms, here you have a few known to choose from, but of course it is also possible completely without cms. i recommend here netlify because it was in the past always very pleasant to use netlify and also in the basic plan is free.

choose your cms for this project, choose wisely 😚

additionally you have to connect to GitHub, stackbit will then create a repository there that the jamstack will eventually use, so you can provide a complete jamstack in these few steps, without any programming or effort on your part. Without worrying about hosting or deployment, unbelievable!

WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE!

if we have everything set up, selected and connected correctly we can just create the page.

now our site is completely uploaded, we have received a unique public link under which we can access the website and can immediately start editing the page.

editing mode of stackbit

and you can get completely creative with your jamstack. you can also add your own domains easily in the netlify backend, the mapping is explained there sufficiently and is no science.

right at the first start you will realize why jamstack is so powerful, the loading times are incredible and you have to worry about very little, SEO configurations are mostly done by stackbit itself, but can be adjusted later. your project is always available on GitHub should you want to take everything into your own hands.

🤯🤯🤯

sources used: https://www.stackbit.com/, https://www.contentful.com/r/knowledgebase/jamstack-cms/