Developer Training: JAMstack 101 with Gatsby and Agility CMS

JAMstack is not about specific technologies.

JAMstack is a new way of building websites and apps that delivers better performance, higher security, lower cost of scaling, and better developer experience.

It is the combination of underlying tooling that makes JAMstack so exciting.

JAMstack is composed of 3 components: Javascript, APIs, and Markup.

Get started with Headless CMS and JAMstack using Gatsby.

Gatsby was designed from the ground up to improve the user experience across the web. That means performance, SEO, and accessibility are top of mind. They have implemented many out-of-the-box techniques to give you a leg up on providing the best experience for your users.

• Gatsby boasts excellent documentation and a number of starters to help you get a site up and running quickly.
• Gatsby uses GraphQL to build its data layer. That means that Gatsby can collect your data from wherever it may be: Markdown, JSON, your favorite CMS, and third party APIs.
• Gatsby is more than a boilerplate site generator. It's built with performance and speed in mind, which is something you can feel in the final product.

These are some of the main reasons Agility CMS is perfect for JAMstack: 

• Use REST APIs or sync SDKs to interact with your content and deliver it anywhere.
• Agility CMS enables developers to code things their way. Agility CMS won't dictate how your content is presented. Use one of the starter templates to fast-track development, or build your own.
• It hosts and completely abstracts away your database, so you never have to worry about maintenance, backups, or connection strings ever again.
• Agility CMS is now Gatsby’s first class partner so you can build a content foundation that will go the distance and deploy your blazing-fast Gatsby site with confidence. Here is how to start on Gatsby and Agility CMS.
• We are currently working with customers who want to adopt JAMstack despite having large, monolithic websites. Using Agility, they’re shifting to a JAMstack setup page-by-page, using JAMStack to selectively improve the more essential sections of their sites. In other words, you don't have to rebuild your website from scratch to adopt JAMstack—you just need the right technologies in your corner. 

This is what we’ll cover in the training session, aimed at web developers:

• Get started with a free Agility CMS account
• Get everything running in your local dev environment
• Build out some new functionality with an additional module

What you’ll need:

• A terminal window
• Visual Studio Code (or your favourite code editor)
• A sense of humor
• A giant rocket-ship (optional)