Q: What's up with all the buzz around Jamstack!? Why did Agility CMS make a strategic decision to support Jamstack after being a .NET CMS for over a decade?
Joel: I see three main reasons.
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Performance & Reliability
Jamstack sites are statically generated, so they are incredibly fast. No web server needs to be scaled or maintained, and these static files can be delivered quickly over a global CDN - which means the response times are rapid. Furthermore, Jamstack frameworks like Gatsby.js and Next.js are good at bundling pages into small chunks, so the actual files are smaller and more responsive - everything FEELS faster. -
Security
Since there's no webserver delivering your static files, and nothing is being computed to deliver your web pages, Jamstack sites are on a new level in terms of being secure. There isn't an entry point for hackers to attack, such as on traditional web servers. Even better, distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks are much less of a problem since most CDN services such as Azure, AWS, Cloudflare and Stackpath also include things like a web app firewall (WAF), making it much easy to thwart these attacks. Jamstack sets you up for success. -
Developer preference
A vast majority of the developer community is proficient with JavaScript. It's the most popular language and growing more so each year. We wanted to ensure Agility CMS empowered more developers, so we've fully embraced Jamstack.
Q: How can using Jamstack change the lives of Agility CMS users? Is it a revolution? Or evolution?
Joel:
Jamstack itself is revolutionary. It's exciting because it's an easier and faster way of developing websites with fewer barriers to entry and far fewer barriers to success. Some techniques allow developers to adopt an evolutionary approach to getting going with Jamstack on an existing site. We're working with customers and partners who have large, monolithic websites. They are using Jamstack to selectively improve the more critical sections of these sites on a page-by-page basis. You don't have to rebuild your site from scratch if you don't want to.
Q: Can you give a specific example when you needed to bluntly tell your client, "OK, you need to start using Jamstack NOW to solve this particular pain you have, or else…."
Joel:
Haha! The good thing about the internet is that it's great for generating buzz, and Jamstack is buzzing right now. Our partners are telling us they want to use Jamstack techniques or asking us to guide them on how to do that with Agility CMS best. We've provided the JavaScript SDK and starter packages for the most popular tools, such as Gatsby.js, Next.js (which are both based on React.js), and Nuxt.js (based on Vue.js). Because of Agility's approach to Content Modelling and Page Management, developers can write more reusable code and give editors the power to maintain more control over the website.
