[nindalf]

> you don’t need to build the files every time you commit.

Is this a big advantage? I write an article in markdown and push to my server. The server’s post-commit hook automatically runs a static site generator. It takes less than a second to run each time. It took me half an hour to set this up[1], https included.

Importantly, since it’s a static site with no client side JS, it’s faster and better for SEO. Anecdotal evidence - my blog is a featured snippet from google for a couple of tech related queries. This wasn’t the case earlier when my blog was generated by ghost.

[1] - https://blog.nindalf.com/posts/setting-up-this-blog/

[depthfirst]

Thanks for pointing out SEO use case; I hadn't thought of it.

To reiterate my use case:

- no maintenance: the site is served from github, so dont have to maintain/pay for a server

- deduplication of work: dont have to write/sync a blog post and a project README for a given project.

Regarding SEO, since all content in on github, a search engine might index github content and make it discoverable that way.

[johnonolan]

Whether you choose to use clientside JS isn't related to any platform. Lots of people conflate this. They build ostensibly a totally empty scaffold site with an SSG and say "look how fast it is" - but the truth is if you built that same site with really any platform in the world, it would be just as fast.

Ghost doesnt require any clientside JS of any kind, it's totally user choice if/when they want to have that. Yesterday I built a Ghost theme with 2.5kb page size, and average pageload of 100ms. Super easy :)

[nindalf]

The speed comparison between my blog on Ghost and my blog on Hugo (an SSG) indicated that it is faster on Hugo. Note that I’m comparing time taken to serve the website, not time taken to generate files.

The same content with the same URLs is ranked higher by Google after the switch, suggesting that Google prefers this.