6 ms·

Uh what? How is this front page? The A in Jam stands for APIs but the author writes that off in favor of (amongst others) storing dynamic site data in a GitHub

Uh what? How is this front page? The A in Jam stands for APIs but the author writes that off in favor of (amongst others) storing dynamic site data in a GitHub repo. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.

jeswin 6y ago
I read it as: sometimes an app+database is the best solution to the problem, and not APIs from a cloud storage provider. That probably applies to most small web apps and blogs, which is where people mostly use WordPress.
- Pandabob 6y ago
  But isn't this exact functionality what you get when using a (headless) CMS? Or am I misunderstanding the conversation here?
electriclove 6y ago
They mention Disqus and maybe there are some good 3rd parties alternatives. It is an important point about that content belonging elsewhere then but I guess that is the Jamstack tradeoff? Tied to community building, is there a Jamstack solution for forums? This is a very similar use case to comments.
altdatathrow 6y ago
Because then your "static" site is supported by dynamic components and now suddenly we reach the obvious conclusion of "wait, why the hell did we re-engineer everything?" Generating static content and saving to a CDN is just a really inefficient way of caching dynamic content.
- lmm 6y ago
  > Generating static content and saving to a CDN is just a really inefficient way of caching dynamic content. Disagree; updating your content when (and only when) it changes sounds a lot more efficient than dynamically generating whenever it's requested and then putting a cache in front of that.
  - altdatathrow 6y ago
    That's called cache warming and high-volume sites have been utilizing that upon deploy for decades.
    - lmm 6y ago
      Cache warming is an overcomplicated way to achieve most of the same thing. You already know exactly what's changed; why would you throw that information away and then attempt to regenerate it, instead of just using it directly?
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    - TuringTest 6y ago
      How well does cache warming support users editing the content directly on the database and control-versioning it? Witch static webpage generators, your non-technical editors get all the benefits from editing flat-text files with markdown and git, instead of relying on a sys-admin to watch the state of the database for them.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
- TuringTest 6y ago
  JAMstack is not about "everything is static", it's about "everything is encapsulated behind an API and implemented with the best technology available". The JAMstack pattern allows storing static content as editable flat-text files, and dynamic comments in a database without mudding everything within the same CMS code; it's just a better separation of concerns.
- thesimon 6y ago
  >and now suddenly we reach the obvious conclusion of "wait, why the hell did we re-engineer everything? Generating non-changing content statically for speed and SEO beforehand and using dynamic components where necessary doesn't seem like a bad trade-off. I guess fully dynamic server-side rendering (with a cache in front of it) would be the easiest to manage, but not hip anymore I assume.
- qeternity 6y ago
  Your site isn’t static if it has comments.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
kevsim 6y ago
I had to read the whole "storing comments in GitHub repos, triggering builds, etc." thing a few times. I feel like we've left the realm of what's reasonable here.

jeswin 6y ago

I read it as: sometimes an app+database is the best solution to the problem, and not APIs from a cloud storage provider. That probably applies to most small web apps and blogs, which is where people mostly use WordPress.

Pandabob 6y ago
But isn't this exact functionality what you get when using a (headless) CMS? Or am I misunderstanding the conversation here?

electriclove 6y ago

They mention Disqus and maybe there are some good 3rd parties alternatives. It is an important point about that content belonging elsewhere then but I guess that is the Jamstack tradeoff? Tied to community building, is there a Jamstack solution for forums? This is a very similar use case to comments.

altdatathrow 6y ago

Because then your "static" site is supported by dynamic components and now suddenly we reach the obvious conclusion of "wait, why the hell did we re-engineer everything?" Generating static content and saving to a CDN is just a really inefficient way of caching dynamic content.

lmm 6y ago
> Generating static content and saving to a CDN is just a really inefficient way of caching dynamic content. Disagree; updating your content when (and only when) it changes sounds a lot more efficient than dynamically generating whenever it's requested and then putting a cache in front of that.
- altdatathrow 6y ago
  That's called cache warming and high-volume sites have been utilizing that upon deploy for decades.
  - lmm 6y ago
    Cache warming is an overcomplicated way to achieve most of the same thing. You already know exactly what's changed; why would you throw that information away and then attempt to regenerate it, instead of just using it directly?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - TuringTest 6y ago
    How well does cache warming support users editing the content directly on the database and control-versioning it? Witch static webpage generators, your non-technical editors get all the benefits from editing flat-text files with markdown and git, instead of relying on a sys-admin to watch the state of the database for them.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
TuringTest 6y ago
JAMstack is not about "everything is static", it's about "everything is encapsulated behind an API and implemented with the best technology available". The JAMstack pattern allows storing static content as editable flat-text files, and dynamic comments in a database without mudding everything within the same CMS code; it's just a better separation of concerns.
thesimon 6y ago
>and now suddenly we reach the obvious conclusion of "wait, why the hell did we re-engineer everything? Generating non-changing content statically for speed and SEO beforehand and using dynamic components where necessary doesn't seem like a bad trade-off. I guess fully dynamic server-side rendering (with a cache in front of it) would be the easiest to manage, but not hip anymore I assume.
qeternity 6y ago
Your site isn’t static if it has comments.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

kevsim 6y ago

I had to read the whole "storing comments in GitHub repos, triggering builds, etc." thing a few times. I feel like we've left the realm of what's reasonable here.