Welcome to the New the New Dynamic

We just launched the next iteration of the New Dynamic. There’s much more to be done (side projects!), but the site has never been so ready to grow with the burgeoning ecosystem of tools and methods that make up the #JAMstack.

The core of the site is the directory of nearly 200 tools. We’ve been collecting links related to those tools for years; we now have over 600 links. We also have over 100 sites in our showcase to show a broad range of use-cases for what we think is the very best way to build websites.

Aside from iterating on the site’s design and shoring up our content, our next step is to add a directory of developers with experience in the field, and we’ll see where that leads us.

The new site is a combination of three important tools: Hugo generates our HTML; it’s fast and does a wonderful job of handling all of our taxonomies. We use Forestry.io to manage our content. Not only does it have a beautiful interface, but it’s critical in keeping the complexity of our varied content in order. The final leg of this “Holy Trinity” is Netlify to deploy and host the site. Not only is Netlify a valuable contributor to the JAMstack ecosystem, their service saves us countless hours.

Aside from those major tools, we use Algolia for search and Chris Macrae’s Serverless Atomic Algolia to keep it updated. On tools pages we use List.js for filtering. We store our images with imgix for hosting and optimization. We use atomic-style CSS with Tailwinds CSS, Lazysizes, Turbolinks for page transitions, and Fonts.com for our signature Franklin Gothic, and Webpack to bring it all together. Of course, this is all in the repo, and you’re welcome to comment or contribute there.

Few people know that our color scheme and typeface on this site pay homage to a marvel of modern engineering, the Porsche 911. My first presentation about static sites (before we had the term JAMstack) I used Porsches to symbolize this new paradigm, against Cadillacs for monolithic CMSs. I think the comparison is apt: Porsches traditionally don’t have an ounce of unnecessary weight and are always looking forward with a singular goal of performance. Maybe the comparison ends there, but modern web development tools and techniques gives us an opportunity to only use what we need and focus on what matters. I hope you find this site helpful toward the same goal.

I want to thank Frank Taillandier for his invaluable support and contributions to this project. Thank you Frank!