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Hey all, Elder.js author and maintainer. Elder's main "opinionated-ness" comes from the fact that we're going to put SEO decisions above all others. This incl

Hey all, Elder.js author and maintainer. Elder's main "opinionated-ness" comes from the fact that we're going to put SEO decisions above all others. This includes doing things such as: * partial hydration * no client-side routing wiz-bang * 0kb JS if there are no hydrated components * and several other tradeoffs. It was also built as an SSG first and it is really good at building very large sites (faster than Hugo). [0] Happy to answer any questions. Here is an overview of the "whys" behind many of the uncommon decisions Elder.js made. [1] --- [0] https://github.com/Elderjs/elderjs/discussions/166 https://github.com/Elderjs/elderjs/discussions/166 [1] https://nicholasreese.com/lessons-from-building-a-static-site-generator/ https://nicholasreese.com/lessons-from-building-a-static-sit... Edit: format/add links

sebmellen 5y ago
Wow, faster than Hugo. Holy s#%t! That’s insane! Looks awesome, can’t wait to try it out.
- nickreese 5y ago
  Stoked to hear what you think. We're building ElderGuide.com (a nursing home directory) which has 18k complex pages in about 1 minute 22 seconds.
  - sebmellen 5y ago
    Ah, the marvels of modern computer processors when they’re not running 18 layers of bloat. Re: https://elderguide.com https://elderguide.com is that where the Elderjs name comes from?
    - nickreese 5y ago
      Yep. :) Though I often laugh at the thought of seniors using a cutting edge JS framework.
      - tomcam 5y ago
        Senior citizen here and author of (I think) the first book on VuePress. Ah… thanks
        sirsinsalot 5y ago
        Casual ageism in action, don't you just love the tech world.
vogon_laureate 5y ago
I was just surveying the terrain for an SEO-dependent static site with headless CMS, so it's nice to have a framework with that particular focus to consider as part of that mix. Thanks!
swyx 5y ago
happy Elder.js user here! just want to tag on my site for folks who are considering adopting elder/svelte/tailwind: https://swyx.io/ https://swyx.io/ and source code: https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/ https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/ and it is working great for SEO/performance despite me layering on some extra js for tweets and youtube links and the like.
- wooolfgang 5y ago
  Pretty happy user here as well! I actually used your source code as reference to build my personal site https://github.com/wooolfgang/liarolfrrey https://github.com/wooolfgang/liarolfrrey and https://liarolfrrey.com/ https://liarolfrrey.com/, so thanks for open-sourcing! One issue I have with elderjs (with the version that I'm using - haven't been up to date), is that hot-reloading with rollup seems to cause issues with css. The experience is not as smooth as per say nextjs fast-refresh, but I'm content with it for my use-case.
  - nickreese 5y ago
    Try the latest version pushed today. V1.4.0 moved the dev server into the rollup config and it should be a lot smoother.
    - wooolfgang 5y ago
      Awesome, checking it out! Thanks for the great work.
Xevi 5y ago
I'm a bit confused about these benchmarks, especially those regarding Hugo. I remember watching a video[0] all the way back in 2015 where Hugo was able to create 5000 pages in roughly 6 seconds. It feels odd that it would take more than 13 times as long to build twice the amount of pages now. Considering that the benchmark you linked to was using newer hardware, and a faster version of Hugo. I guess the benchmark itself might be very different, but it still feels like a huge performance drop. Anyway, Elder looks very promising, and I like the idea of using Svelte a lot more than working with Hugo templates. What do you think is the main thing that limit the built time for smaller sites? [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdiDYZ51a2o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdiDYZ51a2o
- nickreese 5y ago
  To be honest, I'm not familiar with the specifics of the benchmark. I was surprised as well. Currently I think the biggest limiter for small sites is that we sequentially fork the processes and wait for each to bootstrap. I'm sure we could eek out a huge gain by rewriting it and optimizing, but at this point it is faster than anything else in the ecosystem and throwing more CPU cores at a problem is cheaper than throwing more development hours at the problem. :)
nanis 5y ago
> * partial hydration I guess I am not caught up on hip terminology. Can you explain what this means to someone who authored his first web site in 1993 on a NeXT Cube what that means?
- nickreese 5y ago
  In front end JS frameworks there is a tendency to render your site on the server, then also ship JS to the client which then takes over the rendering of the page and adds interactivity. As you can guess this adds a lot of overhead. Partial hydration allows the developer to specify which parts of the page have interactivity and only those parts of the page are made interactive.

sebmellen 5y ago

Wow, faster than Hugo. Holy s#%t! That’s insane! Looks awesome, can’t wait to try it out.

nickreese 5y ago
Stoked to hear what you think. We're building ElderGuide.com (a nursing home directory) which has 18k complex pages in about 1 minute 22 seconds.
- sebmellen 5y ago
  Ah, the marvels of modern computer processors when they’re not running 18 layers of bloat. Re: https://elderguide.com https://elderguide.com is that where the Elderjs name comes from?
  - nickreese 5y ago
    Yep. :) Though I often laugh at the thought of seniors using a cutting edge JS framework.
    - tomcam 5y ago
      Senior citizen here and author of (I think) the first book on VuePress. Ah… thanks
      - sirsinsalot 5y ago
        Casual ageism in action, don't you just love the tech world.

vogon_laureate 5y ago

I was just surveying the terrain for an SEO-dependent static site with headless CMS, so it's nice to have a framework with that particular focus to consider as part of that mix. Thanks!

swyx 5y ago

happy Elder.js user here! just want to tag on my site for folks who are considering adopting elder/svelte/tailwind: https://swyx.io/ https://swyx.io/ and source code: https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/ https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxdotio/ and it is working great for SEO/performance despite me layering on some extra js for tweets and youtube links and the like.

wooolfgang 5y ago
Pretty happy user here as well! I actually used your source code as reference to build my personal site https://github.com/wooolfgang/liarolfrrey https://github.com/wooolfgang/liarolfrrey and https://liarolfrrey.com/ https://liarolfrrey.com/, so thanks for open-sourcing! One issue I have with elderjs (with the version that I'm using - haven't been up to date), is that hot-reloading with rollup seems to cause issues with css. The experience is not as smooth as per say nextjs fast-refresh, but I'm content with it for my use-case.
- nickreese 5y ago
  Try the latest version pushed today. V1.4.0 moved the dev server into the rollup config and it should be a lot smoother.
  - wooolfgang 5y ago
    Awesome, checking it out! Thanks for the great work.

Xevi 5y ago

I'm a bit confused about these benchmarks, especially those regarding Hugo. I remember watching a video[0] all the way back in 2015 where Hugo was able to create 5000 pages in roughly 6 seconds. It feels odd that it would take more than 13 times as long to build twice the amount of pages now. Considering that the benchmark you linked to was using newer hardware, and a faster version of Hugo. I guess the benchmark itself might be very different, but it still feels like a huge performance drop. Anyway, Elder looks very promising, and I like the idea of using Svelte a lot more than working with Hugo templates. What do you think is the main thing that limit the built time for smaller sites? [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdiDYZ51a2o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdiDYZ51a2o

nickreese 5y ago
To be honest, I'm not familiar with the specifics of the benchmark. I was surprised as well. Currently I think the biggest limiter for small sites is that we sequentially fork the processes and wait for each to bootstrap. I'm sure we could eek out a huge gain by rewriting it and optimizing, but at this point it is faster than anything else in the ecosystem and throwing more CPU cores at a problem is cheaper than throwing more development hours at the problem. :)

nanis 5y ago

> * partial hydration I guess I am not caught up on hip terminology. Can you explain what this means to someone who authored his first web site in 1993 on a NeXT Cube what that means?

nickreese 5y ago
In front end JS frameworks there is a tendency to render your site on the server, then also ship JS to the client which then takes over the rendering of the page and adds interactivity. As you can guess this adds a lot of overhead. Partial hydration allows the developer to specify which parts of the page have interactivity and only those parts of the page are made interactive.