Static site generation is a technique that creates flexible websites with the fastest page loads around and unlocks the possibility of 100% free (and ad-free) hosting! At this talk, I’ll show how you can use Metalsmith to transform a directory of simple text files into a static site and a read-only JSON API. Despite the “static” name, a modern static site can feature plenty of interactivity.
In this talk, I’ll guide you through a static site that uses serverless functions and 3rd party APIs to:
- process payments using Stripe - support browsing arbitrary tag combinations (powered by the read-only API) - promote conversation using Disqus comments