Why a JAMStack site crushes Wordpress

TLDR: A JAMStack site crushes Wordpress because one of these scales, and the other doesn’t.

Completely jammed up, lagged out, flat out not working. 😖

Ever opened your frontend editor, whether that’s Squarespace, Wix, a premium Wordpress plugin—or whatever—and experience it?

If I ever break my femur, I’ll try to do a squat, just to see which is more painful.

Just kidding? 😅

Maybe you’re making an “utimate guide” for some topic as part of your content marketing strategy, and you hit a critical mass of content and the browser just can’t seem to handle what you are putting it through.

Heck, I even experience this problem with Microsoft Word.

After a certain number of pages (usually a couple hundred, not uncommon for a manuscript), it just stops working.

A fellow PhD student told me that in the final days of his dissertation revisions it would take over a minute for Word to just save his file. It’s painfully frustrating.

Well, this frontend log-jam bogged me down this morning.

The checklist I never finish writing

I’ve been working on this ultimate SEO checklist for months now.

I keep putting it off, and then later I come back to it, thinking,

Why did I stop working on that?”

Of course, five minutes into using my Wordpress frontend editor and it all came back to me: it’s just impossible to get anything done!

Now I am seriously considering migrating my digital marketing business’s website to Gatsby.js.

You know it. I know it. JAMStack is It

I’ve made a few JAMStack sites for clients recently using some Gatsby starters. I deploy them using Netlify, and all I can say is, “wow.”

JAMStack sites use static HTML files, so there is no PHP involved, no backend, and in the case of Netlify, continuous deployment and no server! 🤩

It’s ultimate security, ultimate speed (seriously, you get local speeds), and, best of all, you can do all your editing in a text editor.

Using a text editor really seals the deal as far as I’m concerned. What could be simpler, or more reliable?

The Plan

I’m going to migrate my business site, truemarketing.ca to a JAMStack site.

Of course, I’ll be using Gatsby. While I could try to use a headless CMS, I think I want to keep my workflow completely local.

I will probably use MDX (markdown with JSX—which in turn is extended JavaScript), but I’ve got a few options I’ll explore.

Either way, I am pumped ✊ to ditch my clunky Wordpress frontend.

If you’re pumped about Gatsby.js too, share this post to Twitter with the #gatsbyjs hashtag!

Here’s a nify quote you can use, too:

TLDR: A JAMStack site crushes Wordpress because one of these scales, and the other doesn’t.