Modern Tools for Building Jamstack Website

Published: Applications

JAMstack applications are often built on top of client-side JavaScript, meaning you don’t need server-side languages like Ruby and Python. That doesn’t mean you can’t use them—if your application needs server-side rendering or heavy lifting, it’s just as easy to implement those tools in a JAMstack app as it is in any other. Here are some popular tools for building your website.

A Static Site Generator: A tool that allows you to write content in markdown files and automatically converts them into HTML pages. This lets you focus on writing content without having to worry about coding HTML from scratch. Popular static site generators include Jekyll, Hugo, Gatsby, and Hexo.

A JavaScript Framework: A library of code that makes it easier for developers to build complex web applications using JavaScript. Popular frameworks include React, VueJS, and AngularJS. A Content Delivery - Network (CDN): If you’re serving your content from a server in your office or your home, there’s a good chance your website will be slower than if it were hosted on a CDN like Cloudflare or Fastly. A CSS Preprocessor: CSS preprocessors allow you to use variables, functions, and other programming features within CSS. They make writing large stylesheets faster and more efficient.

A Task Runner: Task runners let you run automated tasks on your project files, such as compiling SASS into regular CSS or bundling up all of your JavaScript files into one file. Grunt is a popular task runner written in NodeJS but many others exist such as Gulp which is written in Javascript itself.

Media API: Media APIs make it easy to integrate videos and photos in your application e.g cloudinary Hosting Platform: If you don’t want to host your site yourself, there are several static site hosting platforms like Netlify and Surge that will host your static website for free.

A CDN Provider: A Content Delivery Network (CDN) lets you distribute content around the world so that users can access it quickly no matter where they live. Fastly and Cloudflare are two popular CDNs.

A Payment Processor: To accept payments online, you’ll need a payment processor that supports services like Stripe or PayPal.

A Chatbot Platform: Chatbots are an emerging technology that allows companies to interact with customers through messaging apps like Facebook Messenger.

A Customer Support Tool: No matter how good your product is, you’re going to have questions about how it works—and chances are you won’t be able to answer every question by yourself. That’s why customer support tools like Intercom make it easy to manage conversations between your customers and your company.

A Marketing Automation Tool: Marketing automation tools help you better understand who your customers are so you can market to them more effectively.