What is Gatsby JS?
Gatsby JS is a free and open-source static website generator launched in 2015. Gatsby is fully written in JavaScript and uses ReactJS, Webpack, NodeJS, and GraphQL, to achieve the best performances and optimization. It is an extremely dynamic generator and supports different sources such as Markdown, HTML, and React, along with headless CMS like WordPress, APIs, Databases, and filesystems.
Gatsby has many advantages and one of them is definitely to be fully expandable using themes and plugins. Plug-ins are fundamental to expand Gatsby’s capabilities, such as optimizing images, add Google Analytics support, Sitemaps, Cache, and so on. Most importantly, Gatsby’s plugins are also open-source and maintained by a large community.
In the next sections we will also see:
Gatsby JS Alternatives
There are different Gatsby’s alternatives on the market: some of them are written in different languages and others with features. However, one of the most popular alternatives is Next.js which, unlike Gatsby, has server-side support with NodeJS.
That’s said, these are some of the most popular alternatives you can find to Gatsby:
- Next.js: server side framework in NodeJS and React
- VuePress: static site generator built in VueJS and NodeJS
- Hugo: static site generator written in Go
- Jekyll: static site generator written in Ruby
- Hexo: fast and simple blog framework written in NodeJS
- WordPress: popular CMS written in PHP
