Note: This article was originally published on April 10, 2018. Some information may be outdated.

In recent years, the JAMstack architecture has gained popularity for building fast and secure websites. JAMstack stands for JavaScript, APIs, and Markup. It emphasizes decoupling the frontend from the backend, pre-rendering pages for speed and security.

Gatsby is a React-based static site generator that aligns well with the JAMstack philosophy. It allows developers to build static websites using modern tools and practices.

Getting Started with Gatsby

To create a new Gatsby site, you'll need Node.js installed. Then, you can use the Gatsby CLI to set up your project.

npm install -g gatsby-cli
gatsby new my-gatsby-site
cd my-gatsby-site
gatsby develop

This will start a development server at http://localhost:8000, where you can view your site.

Creating Pages

Gatsby uses React components for pages. Create a new file at src/pages/about.js:

import React from "react"

export default function About() {
  return <div>About us</div>
}

This will create a page accessible at http://localhost:8000/about.

Adding Markdown Content

You can source content from Markdown files using plugins. First, install the necessary plugins:

npm install gatsby-source-filesystem gatsby-transformer-remark

Then, configure them in gatsby-config.js:

module.exports = {
  plugins: [
    {
      resolve: `gatsby-source-filesystem`,
      options: {
        name: `pages`,
        path: `${__dirname}/src/pages/`,
      },
    },
    `gatsby-transformer-remark`,
  ],
}

Now, you can create Markdown files in src/pages/, and Gatsby will transform them into pages.

Deploying the Site

Once your site is ready, you can build it:

gatsby build

This will generate static files in the public directory, which you can deploy to any static hosting service.

By leveraging Gatsby and the JAMstack architecture, you can build fast, secure, and scalable websites with modern development practices.