If your website is slow, people leave. That’s called bouncing. You don’t want bouncing visitors, do you?
Beyond this, you need to build a website with performance, scalability, security, accessibility, SEO, analytics, search, and more. Ultimately, you also want to have a dynamic element to your visitors’ experience.
How do you develop a static website quickly and include all these features? And then where do you host it? Won’t this cost a fortune?
No.
Available as free and open-source software (FOSS) under an MIT license, Gatsby’s design makes the developer’s life easier. This ease holds true whether you develop a small or a large, heavily-visited site.
Combine Gatsby development with free or long-term low-cost Gatsby hosting at tiiny.host, you’ve got all your bases covered—an excellent, performant static website developed quickly, easily, and hosted in 30 seconds. Let’s discuss this.
What is Gatsby?
Gatsby is a development platform for creating static websites, also known as a Static Site Generator (SSG). Gatsby’s final output is HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
A visitor’s browser accesses these static files. Instead of using a traditional backend server, the browser does the heavy lifting, bringing the information closer to the user and speeding up the process dramatically. Since server processing isn’t necessary, there is no time lost before sending the HTML/CSS/JavaScript to the browser, and webpage rendering takes place instantly.
How is Gatsby Different?
Other SSGs, such as Jekyll, generate fast static websites. Gatsby does more, taking the benefits of static sites into the realm of dynamic content, such as you get with a CMS like WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal.
Gatsby can also be used as the user interface frontend for headless CMSs, increasing its value to the developer and the users who may need to routinely edit, add, or subtract information from the website.
Progressive Web App Hosting
In effect, Gatsby is a sort of metacompiler. The website you create using the Gatsby platform starts as simple files. But Gatsby goes further, compiling a fully functioning Progressive Web App (PWA). A browser-based runtime is generated which requires no backend server to deploy. This browser-based runtime can prefetch your website’s data and assets, making your visitor’s experience lightning fast.
You host Gatsby’s PWAs the same way as a static website—on performant storage, requiring no backend server. Simple storage requirements increase the developer’s deployment options significantly. Free deployment options are available, as are low-cost, long-term options on various services. For example, tiiny.host is a new service dedicated to static website and PWA hosting in seconds.
How Does Gatsby Work?
Here is the basic process flow for visitors to your Gatsby static PWA site.
1. The visitor requests a page URL (perhaps by a button or an organic search engine link.)
2. The URL’s associated HTML file is sent to the visitor’s browser.
3. The browser reads the HTML file and formats the appropriate links and data.
4. JavaScript within the HTML establishes a connection to the static files, data services, and APIs required to make the content available.
5. The combination of HTML/CSS/JavaScript with the fetched data is rendered to produce the final webpage for the visitor.
As you can see, the static PWA above functions as a user interface service to dynamic APIs and data services. Your visitors get a compelling web experience with the speed, security, SEO, and other benefits of static websites.
What are Gatsby’s Components?
Based on React and GraphQL, Gatsby has many modern development tools baked into the platform.
- Webpack
- SCSS and Less support
- Code splitting
- Resource prefetching
- Lazy-loading
- Performance
- Security
- Accessibility
- Image and video galleries
- Interactive forms and maps
- Animation and data visualization
- More…
Gatsby uses a theming engine and supports plugins. At this time, there are over 2,500 plugins available. You can also write your own custom plugin. Many themes are available. A basic starter theme is generated each time you create a new project.
Hosting a Gatsby Static Site
Hosting a Gatsby static site or PWA is cheaper and easier than traditional server-side hosting. Let’s take tiiny.host again as an example of a new, dedicated static hosting site with many features.
How to Host Your Gatsby Website for Free in 3 Simple Steps
1. Prepare your website files using Gatsby
Compress built files into a single zip file if you have multiple files to upload. Your zip file must include an index.html file.
2. Upload your Zip or HTML file
Go to tiiny.host and upload your zip file or single HTML file.
3. Enter a link name & launch
Enter a custom link name you want and click launch.
That’s it! 30-second deployment.
Making the static hosting process cost-effective, fast, and straightforward are three of Tiiny.host’s most significant values. Check out their website for more information.
Conclusion
There is much more to Gatsby than we can cover here. Check out their documentation, try Gatsby out, and host your website or PWA on tiiny.host for free. As a developer, you won’t get better treatment anywhere else.
