Tired of JS Bloat? Switching to a Markdown-Based Static Site Generator

Why you should prefer simple solutions and how I built this blog with 11ty

Coming from a background in programming, I always tinkered around with websites. It mostly started simple with HTML and CSS, but you'll find out quickly that most modern websites rely on JavaScript Frameworks or CMSs like WordPress. While these tools are powerful and have their place in the modern web, they are also often used for simple static sites like blogs, where they are simply overkill. If you owned a truck and a small fuel-efficient car, you wouldn't use the truck for your daily commute, right? If you can code a little, I believe, the same thing applies here.

The Solution: Static Site Generators

Static Site Generators (SSGs) are tools that take your content, often written in Markdown, and generate static HTML files that can be served directly to users. This approach has several advantages:

• Performance: Static sites load faster since they don't require server-side processing for each request.
• Security: With no server-side code, there's a smaller attack surface.
• Simplicity: No backends to maintain, it's easier to deploy, host, and manage.

11ty

For my blog, I chose 11ty, a simple and flexible static site generator that supports Markdown out of the box. More to follow soon...