We love Jamstack for the agility and site speed it brings to headless WordPress. Gatsby 4 makes that even more robust.
The WordPress space is quite amazing, especially with concern to the adoption of this CMS by businesses of all sizes. Did you know that 500 WordPress websites are built every day? Yes, every day. Bring Jamstack to the table and you have modernity without sacrificing agility for the marketing and development teams.
So why leave WordPress as a CMS when you’re looking for agile solutions? Decoupling content from development is the future and the future is now.
“Combining WordPress & Gatsby lets us have the best of both worlds for content creation & web dev.” Jason Lengsdorf
Why We’re Excited About Gatsby 4
It’s no surprise that we love Gatsby.js. It’s a wonderful framework, SDK if you will, that plays well with React, the REST API, and theme development. Gatsby 3 was amazing and made site builds quite fast by allowing content to update only where it was changed. The world of marketing versus IT was finally at peace. With Gatsby 4, we know we’re in the future and the future is fast.
Gatsby 4 is Fast
Because of Deferred Static Generation (DSG) which is new in Gatsby 4, you don’t have to delete old blog posts to improve your Lighthouse scores. With DSG, Gatsby has handed over the control of page rendering to the developer! You have to love that. (Refer to Gatsby’s blog post on when to use which page rendering mode.) It’s that easy – and that fast. Your SEOs will be happy because you can keep your speed and the content. Developers will be happy because it’s in their control. That’s a win-win.
“With Deferred Static Generation, Gatsby defers non-critical page generation until a user requests it, allowing the most important pages to be built and deployed to the edge instantly.” Gatsby.js
Since the deferred strategies are in the developer’s control, you can choose to defer by the post date or even lower page views. (Wait. What?) Yes. Definitely check out that tutorial.
When it comes to Gatsby 4 and fast, don’t get us started about how happy we are about Parallel Query Processing. It’s a big shift in the burden of processing that makes end-users (your customers) happy. Who has time for high bounce rates?
Gatsby 4 is Modern
It used to be that Next.js won over developers with support for Server-Side Rendering (SSR). Well, that’s no longer a differentiator between Next and Gatsby. With Gatsby 4, we have a truly modern framework and awesome documentation – and Gatsby Serverless functions are supported by both Netlify and Gatsby Cloud.
“Gatsby supporting SSR means that developers can now choose how content is generated, opening up new possibilities for what Gatsby can help build.” Gatsby.js
We love building beautiful, interactive sites with Gatsby. This is why we started building our premium themes, of course! Gatsby 4 is modern, sleek, and – quite frankly – sexy.
MusicTech is a beautiful site built with our themes and the clients love its performance, look, and feel for their brand.
Gatsby 4 is Secure
By its nature, Jamstack has a sort of checks and balances system that helps secure a site: Javascript, APIs, and Markdown. Though no site is ever completely secure – hackers be like that – this system along with SSR makes a pretty great sell.
“Gatsby adds a layer of indirection which obscures your CMS — so even if your CMS is vulnerable, bad actors have no idea where to find it. This is in contrast to systems where bad actors can easily locate the admin dashboard at, e.g., /wp-admin and attempt to hack in.” Gatsby
With eCommerce just being called “commerce,” headless is the solution. Customers want personalized experiences on any device – mobile, tablet, laptop, TV. Commerce requires a modern architecture that is both fast and secure. By decoupling your CMS from the framework, your online store will be fast and those conversion rates will be the envy on the block.
Oh, and be sure to subscribe to our newsletter to keep up-to-date. Things are moving quickly around here and an eCommerce Theme is on the horizon.
Wait. Won’t Full-Site Editing in WordPress Replace Headless?
No. Full-site editing is not a replacement for headless WordPress or Jamstack solutions. We’re excited about what full-site editing means for small businesses and teams who don’t mind the content and development going hand-in-hand. Headless WordPress solutions allow the marketing team to produce and publish content in the familiar WordPress dashboard while the development team handles all things under the hood.
As our founder, Alexandra Spalato said on the Matt Report, “Don’t let full-site editing steal all of the thunder. There’s still so much happening around headless WordPress and the ability to integrate third-party APIs to take the place of plugins.”
At Gatsby WP Themes, we believe the future of the web is decoupled.
“Thrive in the Jamstack world in a painless way.”
