Why I used Gatsby.js for my personal site

In 2020 I decided to give a facelift to my personal website because the last one was already 2 years old.

The obvious Gatsby.js

Since 2018 the reputation of Gatsby.js has grown steadily. So in my turn I decided to take the next step by making the new version of my personal website with Gatsby.

React.

I'm becoming more and more attached to React. For its performance, client-side rendering allows to display the content of a page without having to load the whole page from the server.

So on the one hand we have an ultra-readable and ultra-fast React code on the client side. But on the other hand, we have the power of an ultra powerful static rendering thanks to Gatsby. Indeed, with each change of content, the pages of the site are regenerated and built during production, to be saved on the server.

Markdown

Markdown is a lightweight markup language. Its goal is to provide an easy to read and write syntax. A document marked up with Markdown can be read as it is without giving the impression that it has been marked up or formatted with special instructions.

In fact, using files of this type allows you to have content formatted for the web in a fairly standard way. Thus it is not necessary to have a backend with a database, the Markdown files are on the git repository of the project.

Netlify

This project is also an opportunity for me to discover the Netlify environment.

And what a discovery!

The magic lies in a webhook that makes the link between this service and the git repository. Indeed, each time I commit on the master branch, the code is built directly in production. The free offer allows you to do most of the work and even more with contact forms in particular.