[bilalq]

I'd recommend not being so quick to dismiss the author. Your suggested alternative is actually way more complex. The approach described sets up a static site generator that allows for deployment to a static asset webhost (like S3/CloudFront). What this means are that there is no server to administrate or manage. Aside from the cost and performance advantages, this drastically simplifies the operational overhead. There's nothing to patch, no networking to configure, nothing. Just upload and be done. Moreover, there's no database at all either. No need to manage database credentials, no need to pay the costs to keep a database running, no need to patch a database server, etc...

This is the total opposite of overengineering. The stack the author is running is way simpler than one where you have to spin up a webserver, database, caching solution, etc...