1 Why Jamstack?

 

Chapter 1 from The Jamstack Book by Raymond Camden and Brian Rinaldi

This chapter covers:

  • The Jamstack is more of an architecture or methodology for building web applications than a prescriptive stack of technologies.
  • Jamstack initially formed in response to dynamic web page development that many felt had become cumbersome, slow and insecure.
  • The Jamstack architecture offers a number of benefits including page speed, security and cost.
  • While they can be difficult to identify, many well-known web sites are already built with the Jamstack

As Jamstack has gained popularity in recent years, a common criticism lobbed at it is that it is just a marketing term. The truth is, that they are right. As we’ll explore, Jamstack was a term invented to “rebrand” an architecture many developers were already using to build sites because the existing terminology had become misleading. While calling it marketing may be a fair critique, Jamstack is still a way of building sites that has been gaining rapid adoption by web developers.

1.1   What is the Jamstack?

1.2   A Brief History of Jamstack

1.2.1   The Rise of Static Site Generators

1.2.2   From Static Sites to JAMstack

1.2.3   From JAMstack to Jamstack

1.3   The Benefits of Jamstack Architecture

1.3.1   Performance

1.3.2   Security

1.3.3   Cost

1.4   When Jamstack May Not Be the Right Choice

1.5   Popular Sites Built with the Jamstack

1.6   What You’ll Learn

1.7   Summary