Lessons From Building a Static Site Generator
If you're unaware, Elder.js is Svelte static site generator that supports Partial Hydration, 0kb client side JS when not needed, and it is built with large scale SEO properties in mind.
In 2019, I led the redevelopment of a non-trivial, data driven, SEO property from WordPress to Gatsby... and it was a nightmare I never want to repeat.
At the beginning of 2020, I set out with my friend Nick Lata to change the elder care industry and launched a site called Elder Guide.
Before choosing which framework to marry this project to, I decided to build out tests projects using real data and designs across 6 different frameworks.
After testing Gatsby, Next.js, Nuxt.js, 11ty, Sapper and Hydrogen.js, I chose Sapper specifically because I fell in love with Svelte and couldn't go back to React.
At the time, I was only working with a 5k page site, but I knew within 5 years, ElderGuide.com would likely have 100k pages or more.
