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Discussion on: Personal portfolio: Gatsby vs Next?

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ramesh profile image
Ramesh Elaiyavalli

We are big fans of 11Ty or Eleventy - however, you want to call it. 😀

We got over a 35% performance boost compared to WordPress.

11ty was super simple to learn, build, and extend. Only took us 1.5 days to code and deploy to Firebase. The more popular site generators had more 'stuff', more 'plugins' - seemed too much for our needs. Even Google's web.dev platform runs on 11ty.

Gatsby, Jekyll, Hogo - I am sure they are all good. It all depends on the size and complexity of your needs.

Bottom line: Use any open Static Site Generator, with a bias towards Open Source.
They are way better than WordPress (or any old school CMS). You will enjoy a faster site, more security, and much more freedom.

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leob profile image
leob

Can you elaborate on the "35% performance boost", what metrics does that apply to, how did you measure it?

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ramesh profile image
Ramesh Elaiyavalli

We measured based on Google PageSpeed Insights, Google LightHouse, GTMetrix, and various tools.

If you run Google PSI - you can see for yourself.

  1. Our old - Wordpress site - srclogixwp.tk/
  2. Our new live site - srclogix.com

Run PSI few times on both. To get the median score. Also note that the new site has more images, more SVG, and more JS.

We still managed to get a lot better performance using 11ty 👍

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leob profile image
leob • Edited

Cool ... however, I just checked out your old site and your new site and my impression is that the 35% is a gross underestimation! Every link I click takes seconds to load with the old site, and loads in a fraction of a second with the new site. The difference feels more like 350% than like 35%.

No wonder if all pages are simply statically generated and don't need to be loaded from a database and then dynamically generated (although I wouldn't expect the improvement to be that large).

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ramesh profile image
Ramesh Elaiyavalli

Glad you see the BIG IMPROVEMENT Leob. CDN cache may make it better but if you truly compare apples-to-apples, Static Site is WAY faster - no doubt! 👍🚀

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rockykev profile image
Rocky Kev

I switched from Gatsby, to Gridsome (Vue), and then finally to Eleventy. I am really loving the experience. I actually understand almost everything under the hood. It's really nice.

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patarapolw profile image
Pacharapol Withayasakpunt • Edited

Static Site Generator does not obliviate the need for CMS. Actually,

  • too many people are trying to sell headless CMS
  • Headful CMS, like WordPress can also be both made static, and made headless.
  • I do think CMS might be helpful, if you have a lot of content.