WM. Green Roofing Ltd.

The transition of a WordPress powered website into a statically generated webpage has increased the performance of wmgreenroofing.ca by over 200%. 

Staying competitive in the online marketing and SEO world has become increasingly more difficult and with fast-evolving technologies, speed and performance are significantly more important. Websites developed with modern web technologies such as Gatsby, Netlify, GitHub, GraphQL, and best coding practice will assure incredible performance and long-lasting competitiveness.

Let me show you the comparison between a WordPress website and a statically generated website, tested with Google’s developer tools Lighthouse and PageSpeed Insights.

What is a Dynamic site 

A dynamic website is considered to be a database-driven environment, powered by server-side programming languages such as PHP and Go and are often based on content management systems (CMS) like WordPress or Squarespace. Dynamic websites are the first choice for most developers and businesses. There are many easy-to-use tools to build them, and they make content creation and publication extremely efficient. Unfortunately, they have some major disadvantages over static websites. 

What is a Static Site 

A static website in a rather old but solid concept. They return predefined (hardcoded) data to the user without needing to communicate to a database for each visit of a page. The absence of the strict relationship between a CMS and the website increases the speed and security significantly. Building a static website, however, often leads to greater development and maintenance costs and most sites today are therefore powered by a CMS.

What is a Static Site Generator

Static site generators like Gatsby or Jekyll combine a dynamic and static concept to empower businesses to benefit from both. They work similarly to dynamic sites and make use of HTML templates and web content to create a webpage. The main advantage is that with static site generators this happens only once during the building stage. By the time a user visits the site, the page has already been built by the server and populated with the latest content. There is no more server-side processing left and the website returns instantly to the visitor.

In my experience, speed, reliability, security, and user experience benefit the most from incorporating progressive web technologies 

• Speed

Because the static site doesn’t need to pull content from a CMS and wait to be built by a server before returning the visitor, they are usually considerably faster, blazing-fast you might say, than dynamic sites. Another great benefit is the SEO boost as loading speed is a significant SEO contributor.

• Reliability

Since static websites don’t rely on server-side processing, there are fewer chances for internal errors and downtimes. Initial development can be a bit more time consuming and costly, however, less maintenance and cheap hosting will lower expenses over time.

• Security

Static sites are 99.9% safe from third-party threats. Due to the nature of a decoupled CMS, meaning the site is no longer connected to any backend by the time the user visits it (Headless CMS), it’s almost impossible for hackers to gain any access to private information. 

• User Experience

Progressive web technologies not only shine with extreme speed but also allow further configurations that enable features such as offline accessibility, downloading, and push notification to create a user experience we only know from native mobile apps. 

Since the progressive web app (PWA) technology is rapidly changing the web development industry, I hope this article gave non-technical folks a better idea of what they are and what differences they can make. Having a better understanding of current developer trends will assist you to choose the right technologies and developers for your project.

Visit wmgreenroofing.ca and build your own opinion about my take on a Progressive Website. If you are a developer reading this, I strongly encourage you to consider building your next project with the above-mentioned technologies and best practices. It will require more time and effort but you will deliver an outstanding product to your client.

I am a huge PWA proponent and love to share my experience. Reach out if you have any questions.