[yannoninator]

so many questions about this:

how does the database fit into this?

how does the 'Jamstack' compare to Wordpress or it doesn't?

how does content get edited in the 'Jamstack' like Wordpress?

how is the 'Jamstack' 'mainstream'? compared to what?

why do I have to use Git to use the 'Jamstack'?

[input_sh]

It helps if you separate the first three letters:

JavaScript + APIs + Markup = JAMstack.

Markup is the content, which can be entered via any method. You can set up a CMS like WordPress or Ghost to serve this role, or you can build your own interface. That markup is then made compatible with various JavaScript libraries via APIs.

But it evolved over the years to the point where "JavaScript" part isn't entirely accurate. You can throw any static site generator in the mix and just use a plugin that will convert content edited via CMS into Markdown files.

It's basically a way for front-end developers to not particularly care about the backend. So instead of making WordPress themes or whatever they make a site using static site generators. Users don't like the look of an editor? You have the ability to change it completely, find a plugin, and the end result is the same website. No need to adapt the theme to the new CMS or bother with migrating content between editors.

[PinkPigeon]

I can at least answer this for my 'Jamstack' product (I think it might be accidentally 'Jamstack', as I only recently found out that this refers to static pages with no DB etc).

I wanted to just have a sensible frontend for Hugo, with easily reusable components that are not React, etc.

So, your questions:

> how does the database fit into this?

The only DB we have is our own CMS, so that's keeping your user details and your site details. That's it. The websites the CMS produces go straight to Cloudflare as static sites. The files sit on our server and are manipulated directly from within the CMS.

> how does the 'Jamstack' compare to Wordpress or it doesn't?

We don't have themes, or drag and drop block-based editing. We use modules (basically components) that combine different ways of displaying text / imagery / video and can be stacked vertically into a static website. All of this runs a lot faster, as we don't have a super complex react frontend with a million loc of JS, but rather just some vanilla js sprinkled in here and there to keep things a bit dynamic. Also works really well on mobile, which Wordpress doesn't do all that well I don't think. Makes it a lot easier to represent site structure visually imo

> how does content get edited in the 'Jamstack' like Wordpress?

A bunch of json files / go html templates fed into Hugo, which compiles a static site. These json files are of course represented in a very visually appealing (I hope at least) way. The whole point of the CMS is to keep all technical concerns far, far away from users.

> how is the 'Jamstack' 'mainstream'? compared to what?

I am not sure it is. Everyone I've so far spoken to is only aware of Squarespace, Wordpress (they claim they're 40% of the web), Wix, or the site builders that come with 123reg or Godaddy. And almost nobody seems to like them, which is a real shame. I think that entire sector has failed to enable laypeople to make websites. I hope to somehow be able to rectify that.

> why do I have to use Git to use the 'Jamstack'?

I think it's for CI (continuous integration) convenience. The problem is that only developers understand how this works. We actually started out deploying to Netlify via git, but the process was too slow and brittle (often webhooks wouldn't work). Thus, we just deploy static sites directly to Cloudflare workers sites. No git involved. Netlify also supports .zip file deployments FWIW.