What should be my next SSG/JAMstack?

General
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Background
I started using Jekyll in 2017 due to it’s ease of use and ability to host with GitHub pages for free. I built many a site on it that still stand to this day but developer support has been waning and I noticed some deficiencies in scaling for large sites and lack of native functionality for modern web needs (eg image minification and scaling). Also, I want to use what the big dogs are using so I can get jobs with higher paying clients to be frank. With the exception of 18F (RIP), no one is using Jekyll and I need to up skill while I have the time.

The other issue with SSG/JAMstack is that frameworks seem to gain popularity and then go poof when a newer/better framework comes along to become the new hot thing. How can I convince clients that my framework is better than Wordpress, Squarespace, Webflow, etc. when it goes out of vogue and then potentially breaks? For all it’s faults, Wordpress has been there since 2003 and shows no signs of going anywhere.

Wordpress hosting and other visual editors (save for Hubspot CMS) is cheap. $25-$50/month is the range and they get a visual editor they still need me to figure out :upside_down_face:. “Development” of those sites goes really quick so costs can be kept down. A framework is only as “powerful” as it is feasible to implement within budget and time constraints.

My ultimate goal is to create a base template with this SSG/JAMstack and CloudCannon visual builder so I can offer low-budget clients an alternative while honing my skills for the big money players.

Requirements

  • Framework must have a large and active user base with a product road map.
  • Framework must work with CloudCannon’s visual editor.
  • Framework will preferably support git based content, but API is cool.
  • Framework must be able to handle large files (eg content editors will chuck in huge image files and they need to be scaled and minified on build).
  • Framework must fit within partner or basic plans for smaller sites (5 pages, 3 content types).

Acceptance Criteria

  • Respond with your SSG/JAMstack that fits the requirements.
  • Do not tell me it’s “powerful”.
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Context

I have built my own framework that follows the exact same idea that you just mentioned. Its not popular and its primarily used by my agency and our clients, but the repo is public. It is built using eleventy, cloudclannon, and netlify (sorry cloudcannon team). It doesn’t follow best practices, its scrappy, no documentation, but I’m still getting paid to have websites built with it? Why? Let me tell you why.

My experience

I’m going to put on my business owner hat for this piece.
The answer here depends on who your clients are. I serve local small businesses and I haven’t had an issue trying to get clients onto my custom platform. I don’t even mention eleventy or cloudcannon to my clients because the reality is that they don’t care. I also don’t even bring it up when talking with them because I’m not selling my platform and its features, (this is a developer mindset). I am selling a solution to their problem (bad / no website) and I only mention specific features if it fixes their pain points.

Sales tip:
If someone asks you “what do you use to build a website?” you respond back “did you have a certain feature in mind?” You then use what they tell you to sell your own sites. “Yes our websites can do X” notice no mention of platform yet. You then keep the sales conversation going.

If you find yourself in a situation trying to explain why your framework / SSG is better than wordpress, you have lead the the conversation the wrong way IMO.

However, everything that I have said goes out the door if your clients are technical and do care about what platform their website is built on. But if this is the case, you are acting more as a consultant.

What I said also goes out the door if your clients are on the larger enterprise side, but fast and basic website building framework likely doesn’t fit their needs to begin this so this is a moot point.

This has been my experience, and my opinion. Don’t take this as fact.

My own “Framework”

Like I mention I have built something my own agency that is very similar to what you are looking for.

  • Framework must have a large and active user base with a product road map.
    • I use Eleventy, cloudcannon uses eleventy, and Eleventy recently joined font awesome. I don’t see it going anywhere soon.
  • Framework must work with CloudCannon’s visual editor.
    • Bookshop + Eeventy = Works in CloudCannons visual editor
  • Framework will preferably support git based content, but API is cool.
    • Is git based
  • Framework must be able to handle large files (eg content editors will chuck in huge image files and they need to be scaled and minified on build).
    • Eleventy’s image plugin can do this (I made a custom version for my builder)
  • Framework must fit within partner or basic plans for smaller sites (5 pages, 3 content types).
    • Using cloud cannons config you can disable page creation and only allow currently existing pages. I allow unlimited pages for all my plans and sell levels of support instead. Basic: Do updates yourself. Business: We manage it for you (people rarely ask for updates).

Feel free to steal ideas from my own “framework” (not sure if it counts) I’ve been developing it over the last 6 months and continue to work on it to this day. Feel free to ask about how I handle scenarios, chances are I’ve thought about it and figured something out.

Example sites built using the tool:

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Kia ora!

Dev from the CC Enterprise Team here :slight_smile: Just thought I’d throw my 2 cents in (just my own opinions here… other devs might have other thoughts on the matter…)

I’ve used a good few SSGs with :cloudcannon: now, and would echo Gio’s suggestion and say Eleventy is probably an excellent choice for all of your requirements.

My top three (personal faves) would probably be:

  1. Eleventy :11ty:
  2. Hugo :hugo:
  3. Astro :astro:

Eleventy and Hugo are similar, and probably pretty much equal in my rankings (Eleventy might be narrowly beating out Hugo IMO, but mostly equal). They both ‘resemble’ Jekyll, Eleventy probably most so with its option for Liquid templating (Hugo is Go, so the syntax for Go Templates is definitely a slight learning curve if you’ve never used it).

Astro is excellent too, but a different beast. Being :javascript: based, it feels a little different in how you have to set up certain things (e.g. shortcodes, or ‘snippets’ in :cloudcannon: parlance, require MDX as opposed to straight markdown, and a little finessing to import etc etc…) Also, some of the ‘server’ type features or benefits won’t work when you end up having to export to static files (the same is true of NextJS et al). But if you’re a JS fan, JSX, react, etc then it can be more familiar I guess?

Anyways, I think Gio gives a great overview of the Eleventy features, including the image optimization plugin etc, so I won’t belabour those points. :grin:

Interested to hear what the rest of the community thinks though!

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Eleventy seems to be a strong contender. I’m definitely going to adopt it for my CloudCannon + CA Template build and hopefully bring some big business to CloudCannon.

I have no doubt it’s going to be a great framework, but, like Jekyll, it does not come up on LinkedIn searches and I’m trying to get out of small org marketing team hell. I get so many results for Next JS vs anything else. Lest you see these big orgs adopting these frameworks from your set in enterprise.

I don’t prefer react, but if I’m charging an hourly rate and the client has deep pockets then I love it lol. I built a front-end with Gatsby (with Sanity, sorry y’all) and found things I liked, but everything took so much labor and learning. JS is not a strong suit of mine but I know if I wanna move on up, it needs to be. I really just care about UX (both editor and user) at the end of the day so I’m code agnostic.

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I made my own little modified jekyll starter template and that’s my goal with my next framework to so thanks for the example.

I’m less worried about the convo with clients and more looking at the ecosystem as a whole. I want to be able to stand behind my suggestion for not going to Wordpress et al by showing all the other sites that adopt said framework. I can’t tell them about bleepblorp or whatever goofy name the framework has if barely anyone is using it and you need a PhD in computer science to set it up only for it to lose contributors/supporters 3 months later.

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Yeah, fair enough on needing to consider the ‘marketing’ angle of it all. (I particularly like the “if the client has deep pockets then I love it” remark! :laughing: )

The only real ‘issue’ with NextJS, as I mentioned, is some of the features that you might get used to using locally (certain routing patterns, middleware, etc) won’t work in the ‘static’ world. Not a deal-breaker, but sometimes requires creative solutions to get around (importing snippets ‘globally’ for use on MDX pages for instance… not as straightforward as you might assume… but solvable).

FWIW I’ve also used Gatsby with CC, and I struggled a bit with the restrictions around prefetching specific data with GraphQL… seemed to limit the flexibility of pagebuilding. But maybe I just need more learning, as you say :upside_down_face:

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If you do end up making your own template in Eleventy, feel free to shoot me a message. Maybe I can help you avoid the some of the headaches I’ve had to fight though :slightly_smiling_face:

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@Ed_Cupaioli CA Template got me interested, do you have like to the demo site, I don’t see it in Github.

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As a marketer my experience tells me there are several important points that are often undersold or unaddressed. I think these are relevant to your thinking, but perhaps not very “developer”.

  1. Future Proofing: means data structure, ability to export, ability to adapt to new platforms/apis that become important. Marketing changes faster than dev (dev change speed + social change speed), many of our platforms and tech are short-ish term, and we’re used to spinning things up for testing.
    If you sell 11ty/cloudcannon - imo it’s not as good as selling: Clean code, usable data, updateable design, all for modern frameworks/CMS currently expressed on 11ty via cloudcannon.

  2. Offer control and minimising repeat work. Use of global content blocks, centrally controlled styles etc. If you demonstrate control where we can handle a complete rebrand (logo, colours, fonts, css gradients) from one global styles panel, in 30 minutes, I’ll buy it. And I don’t even need it.

Good luck and good skill on your process!

p.s. You could pitch using The world has changed framework.

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Since you’re coming from Jekyll, I would suggest taking a look at Bridgetown, it’s a modern fork of Jekyll.

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There is a demo site linked on the HTML repo

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I can only add two links per post so here’s some other resources:

Everything you need for the template and all the repos: https://template.webstandards.ca.gov/

Here’s my live site (made with wordpress at their behest) https://www.cdpr.ca.gov/

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On #1 my fear stems from my Jekyll/Forestry.io stack. I had to go back to clients hat in hand and switch them to CloudCannon. I’m a lot more careful now about choosing frameworks for the client and myself. Jekyll still works but focusing on it for 5 years really killed my job prospects.

Huge agree on #2. I’m used to having to adapt graphic designer PDF flyers into websites but I recently convinced a client on components and it worked great. They’re on Hubspot CMS so that’s how it’s supposed to work, but the last devs just copy pasted code from stuff they “developed” in Webflow. Hubspot CMS is really great and super simple to setup but oppressively expensive and there’s no CI/CD flow. They have a local CLI that’s kinda meh and there’s no way to connect a staging site to prod so we’re just doing it in preview and hoping for the best.

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We’re working on a 11ty-based framework that should tick all your boxes.

The goal is to build a foundational component library that’s packed with the components you’re most likely to need for a new site. Everything is tuned for performance, accessibility, and editing in CloudCannon, while staying as unopinionated as possible in design so it’s easy to brand for any use case.

Looking forward to sharing more about this :soon_arrow: .

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That’s exactly what I’m doing too. I chose eleventy and am churning away at a non-profit site for my use case. It’s definitely not as simple as Jekyll but I like the flexibility of being able to use node modules directly in the site rather than a manegerie of plug-ins and task runners to optimize images, minify code, and what not. Bookshop also poses a challenge in how I import scss and use it across the site and components but it’s something I just gotta figure out.

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That’s awesome Ed! Agreed, Jekyll is great for “just working”. 11ty is clearly inspired by Jekyll and has more layers of complexity.

That can be a lot to all get working together. Our 11ty starter template might be a good reference for some of those challenges.

Let us know if we can help with anything.

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That’s precisely what I am using.

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Would love to hear more about your non-profit site when you’re done! Currently we’re working on one using 11ty, Stripe & Mailchimp but would love to hear how others support non-profits :blue_heart:

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Non-profits occupy the worst possible market sector: high-effort, low-reward. It’s unfortunately my background and network so I’ve figured out over the years the best way to support them is to create base templates that you can adjust to their branding and get something in production on a shoestring budget.

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100% hear ya!! Base templates was where my head was at too but now I know you might be a good partner to call on :wink:

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