The modern static website requires modern and advanced development approaches to develop highly secure, scalable, and good-performing websites that meet what users need. That is why developers are already using Gatsby, a static site generator with WordPress websites, to get the best websites overall. The speed, customization, and great user experience are some of the benefits of a WordPress website. But then, what does it take to use Gatsby with WordPress? What are the benefits? When should you use the Gatsby plus WordPress combination? Get these and more informative insights on the Gatsby + WordPress combination for website development in this comprehensive guide.

What is Gatsby? Quick Overview

Developers and many website owners are already familiar with WordPress, including its features, functionalities, and benefits. In this case, we will describe a quick overview of Gatsby.

Gatsby is an open-source SSG (static site generator) framework offering reliable web development solutions. With Gatsby, developers can easily develop solid, secure, and faster websites that deliver seamless and personalized user experience. Gatsby uses Webpack, GraphQL, and React capabilities under Jamstack (JavaScript, API, and Markup) to offer streamlined static site generation solutions.

The Gatsby Jamstack architecture embraces the separation of components, which facilitates rapid development and an enhanced user experience.

Key features of Gatsby

Why would you want to integrate Gatsby with WordPress? Well, some of the core features making Gatsby unique in its own way include the following:

Extensive ecosystem plugins – Gatsby boasts a rich plugin ecosystem, which helps developers explore more functionalities and seamless user experience of apps and websites. What’s more, the wide range of these ecosystems facilitates customization, enabling developers to deliver apps and websites that meet diverse user needs.

Extensive documentation – Gatsby simplifies the developer’s work by offering in-depth documentation. Developers can find immediate solutions to specific development requirements from the documentation. On top of that, Gatsby boasts a huge and active community that contributes towards making Gatsby an effective and reliable framework.

Great performance – Gatsby is designed to deliver excellent performance, especially in terms of good user experience and speed. Static site generation and code-splitting techniques in Gatsby enhance its overall performance.

Integration requirements – it is easy to integrate Gatsby with other platforms, such as WordPress, to simplify content management processes. Apart from streamlined integration processes, Gatsby provides customization tools that simplify developer’s work plus enhance the overall performance of a website.

Top benefits of Gatsby: why use Gatsby with WordPress?

Using Gatsby with WordPress comes with many benefits, as outlined below:

Fast websites – Gatsby is known for its incredible speed. Of course, page load times impact user visits and conversion rates. A high-performing website will always attract a large user base. What’s more, such websites often have a higher conversion rate.

Improved security – using Gatsby on a static website enhances the website’s security. Static websites have static files, meaning hackers have nothing to hack and manipulate. What’s more, it is easy to regenerate the lost static files when needed.

Extensibility & Flexibility – developers can build customized projects easily when using Gatsby. Since Gatsby boasts an extensive plugin ecosystem, it makes integration processes streamlined, allowing developers to explore third-party services. Again, Gatsby suits diverse projects, be it complex web projects, small website solutions, or large-scale apps. It simplifies work for developers who want to build scalable projects easily.

Reduced server costs – it is expensive to host dynamic websites since the server might align with the tech stack. However, with static sites, Gatsby enables developers can host on any server, thus reducing hosting costs.

Ease of integration –the fact that Gatsby uses GraphQL and React technologies means it can integrate and work seamlessly with modern web development technologies. This streamlines the developer’s workflows as they only focus on handling the development processes and not the complex configurations.

Again, Gatsby is developer-friendly since it has an extensive community that is active, plus comprehensive documentation that helps developers with the processes from scratch.

Gatsby limitations

Yes, Gatsby has many benefits that streamline web and app development processes, enabling developers to build well-performing modern solutions. However, the open-source framework also has some limitations, including the following:

Requires technical expertise – built on GraphQL and ReactJS, developers must have adequate JavaScript knowledge and skills plus the basics of GraphQL. This limits developers who aren’t well-versed with such technologies.

Frequent builds are inconvenient – Gatsby works with static sites that experience issues with frequent reconverts. This means the modifications made on a website can only reflect after you regenerate and reupload the page on the server.

Lacks in-build dynamic content – before you consider using Gatsby, you must figure out how to manage dynamic content, which can be a complex process.

Step-by-step using Gatsby with WordPress

WordPress is a reliable and open-source content management system that simplifies work, especially for those who lack adequate coding skills yet want to build and manage a website without much struggle.

Gatsby, on the other hand, is an open-source static site generator that simplifies the web development processes, enabling developers to produce modern solutions to solve modern issues. When used together, Gatsby and WordPress enable developers to achieve more functionalities and enhance user experience.

Below is a step-by-step process of how to use Gatsby with WordPress:

• Gatsby set up

When using Gatsby with WordPress, the first step is to set up a Gatsby and then use it to create a static site. When setting up the Gatsby environment, do the following:

Check Gatsby fundamentals – these are the components that facilitate Gatsby’s operations. In this case, you will need the npm and Nodejs package set up before you install Gatsby. With npm and Nodejs complete,you will need to install Git to complete the management processes.

If you are using Linux OS, use the package installer to install Nodejs, in case you are using Mac, use homebrew or still download their respective installers. For Windows OS, use the installer on the download page to install Git and Nodejs.

Gatsby installation – with Git and Nodejs successfully installed, go ahead and install Gatsby, then create the first site using Gatsby.

Create and launch your site using Gatsby – run the gatsby new gatsby-wordpress to create a new Gatsby site.

Gatsby will then clone the gatsby starter template through a gatsby-wordpress directory. You can offer a new template here, if necessary, for cloning. Next, run the development form of the site when the cloning is over and all the installations are in place. Use the cd gatsby-wordpressgatsby develop command to complete this process.

Finally, you can now build the static site using the gatsby build command and then upload it to the server.

Use the serve command to activate the HTML server locally so that you can review your Gatsby static site.

At this point, you’ve developed a Gatsby static site. Now, you can go ahead to the next phase of integrating it with WordPress.

• Gatsby-WordPress integration

This section describes the processes and tasks you complete to ensure you have a Gatsby-WordPress site in place, ready to explore the advanced functionalities.

Ideally, the entire process revolves around collecting WordPress data and then creating a basic static site using the latest template.

To start off the process, you will need to install the Gatsby plugin for WordPress using the npm install gatsby-source-wordpress command.

Next, you will need to complete the Gatsby configuration using the gatsby-config.js command. With the configuration complete, add the code file WordPress source to complete the Gatsby-WordPress integration.

Use GraphQL to fetch posts – after completing the WordPress source configuration, determine the details you need to collect from the WordPress site. GraphQL for Gatsby will facilitate this process by collecting bulky WordPress posts.

The next step is to create a new page for each post.

• Create a page template for every post

Here, you will need to activate Gatsby, ensuring it generates a post for every page on the WordPress site, with each post having its respective links. The tasks under this phase include the following:

Creating a page for every post – at this point, you have pulled the posts from the WordPress source. It is now about time to program Gatsby to generate a page for every post using the createPage command.

Create a template for each post – in the src directory, generate a directory template, then create a new file blog-post.js in the directory. The GraphQL will help you get the additional details like author names and dates, which will appear at the end of each post. Use the GraphQL editor to create more fields where necessary.

Page linking – at this point, you have a new page for every post created successfully. Next, you need to include links to the respective posts in relation to the index page using the index.js command to complete the process.

• Advanced migration

Yes, you have completed the processes of moving wordpress posts. However, performing advanced migration is crucial as it eliminates possible issues in the future. This section focuses on images and the latest modified data. The tasks in this section include the following:

Converting image paths –supposed you moved the original WordPress context with images, you will notice the images are displayed showing the initial WordPress source. When hosting the images within WordPress install, you might get issues later, hence the need to move the images too. However, when hosting the images externally, you don’t need to worry.

So, restart the development server after the changes have been made, and the images will be processed automatically.

Show the last modified data – when dealing with blogs, you keep updating from time to time, it is important for the readers to know if they are reading the updated information, hence the need to include the last modified date.

In this case, add the modified filed in the GraphQL query list, then add the required parameter for formatting. With this in place, you can now see the last date a blog was modified.

Gatsby with WordPress use cases

Not all projects suit a Gatsby plus WordPress combination. When handling any of the following projects, the Gatsby plus WordPress combination would be the real deal:

• When handling projects that prioritize tight security
• When the development teams prefer using popular technologies that are open-source
• When handling projects where performance is of great impact
• When dealing with teams that are experts in editing content in WordPress
• When there are content modeling restrictions and access control workflows
• When redesigning websites with content stored in WordPress
• When working with teams who prefer their defined tech stack and data.

Note: on the same note, don’t use the Gatsby plus WordPress in the following scenarios:

• When you prefer a fully managed cloud content management system
• When the development team prioritizes the use of WordPress UI themes

Conclusion

Gatsby plays a big role in enhancing the functionalities of static websites. Integrating it with WordPress enhances the functionality and overall performance of the website even more. The process of integrating Gatsby with WordPress can be complex, but with the steps outlined in this guide, you can complete the process successfully and take advantage of the extensive features and functionalities of both WordPress and Gatsby to improve user experience with your website.

However, before you initiate the process, it is vital to have a good understanding of GraphQL and Gatsby to simplify the integration steps below:

• Gatsby installation in preparation for the site
• Use GraphQL to connect Gatsby to the WordPress source
• Generate blog post templates
• Move images from WordPress
• Perform advanced migration to show the last modified date from WordPress

With the integration processes complete, you can start enjoying improved security and better speed as long as you have a good host. You can consider a reliable hosting provider for valuable resources that will elevate your website and use the extra time to focus on other important development tasks.

Once you decide to convert your WordPress website to leverage the capabilities of Gatsby, you are already a step ahead towards enhancing the security and functionality of your website, which will streamline the user experience.

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