Switching from Gatsby to Statiq

21/06/2021

I initially built this website back in 2018, and since then I have been using the popular static site generator GatsbyJS.

At the time it was a great decision, I was able to expand my knowledge and experience of static site generators, and front-end frameworks like ReactJS, but as a back-end developer the urge to move to a .NET platform was ever-present.

Moving to a .NET platform would then raise some important questions:

  • What platform should I use?
  • Do I still want to use a static site generator?
  • Should I use a traditional CMS or DXP?
  • How am I going to host the .NET application?

I had originally thought about migrating to Umbraco, a flexible open source .NET CMS that is popular with a number of clients at NetConstruct. It appealed to me as the licensing is free, they have a great community #H5YR, and they are releasing early betas for Umbraco 9 which introduces support for .NET Core, .NET 5 and beyond! 🚀

Moving to Umbraco would mean tackling a few obstacles - firstly I would need to consider alternative hosting solutions. With my current site being a static site, it meant that I could host it for free on GitHub pages which is a decent static site host, but doesn't work well for CMS or DXP hosting.

The move would also mean I'd have to amend content models and migrate content from a headless CMS into a traditional CMS, which I hadn't originally planned on doing so.

At the beginning of 2021, I started seeing a lot of content from the Kontent DevRel team promoting Statiq. From tweets, to blog posts (check out these great articles on Netlify and DEV Community blogs), to even a dedicated website explaining the benefits of using Jamstack on .NET (website has since been taken offline 😢). I was instantly sold - a static site generator that allows you to build a Jamstack website using .NET 5 and still be able to host on a CDN 😍.

For .NET developers, Statiq should feel very familiar when comparing to MVC, it still uses models and views, but replaces controllers with pipelines. A pipeline processes input documents through a number of modules (which transform the input) to generate an output which you can then render using the Razor view engine - meaning you can create layouts, views and partials.

Example flow of documents through Statiq
Example flow of documents through Statiq

If you're using the Kontent source plugin, you can represent inline components of your structured content through a partial or display template.  Since Statiq works with .NET Core, why not utilise other new cool features like tag helpers? 😁

So that was it, decision made, my website was going to be Statiq + Kontent + Netlify.  Just like GatsbyJS was the right decision for me back in 2018, I am confident this combination is the right decision for me in 2021.

The source code for my Statiq site can still be found on GitHub - https://github.com/liamgold/goldfinch-statiq.