What is JAMstack?
Published Fri Jan 28 2022
When it comes to website architectures there are many options available depending on what content your website will serve or how it will be used. Jamstack is an architecture that simplifies the backend complexity of websites. The "JAM" in Jamstack is an acronym that stands for JavaScript, API's, and Markup.
There are few variants of how to use Jamstack, the first way is to code up your site as you would normally using a backend server and use a Static Site Generator to create a static copy of your site that can be served directly from a very fast CDN (Content Delivery Network). This removes the need for a backend processing server to generate the pages dynamically for each user request.
This method can be useful for sites that are content based like blogs or a news sites. The downside to this is that each change that needs to be made to the website, including content, needs to be pushed out to the CDN after running the site generation again. The good news is there are tools to help automate these steps.
Another way to use Jamstack is to create a Single Page Application or SPA. What this means is all of the code for the website is contained in a single HTML page. With the help of JavaScript and in most cases using a backend API, allows you to have a very rich web experience without once again, needing backend web server processing each request. The HTML can also be served from a fast and globally replicated CDN. API's can be used for retrieving custom data dynamically as the user needs it. Single Page Applications also hold additional power in that they can work offline when configured and coded to support this feature which can be very useful for applications that are running on a phone that might not have a reliable internet connection.
Another great feature of Jamstack is it is very easy to split up the front-end JavaScript and Markup developers from the back-end API developers depending on the number of developers on the team. Jamstack can and will work with any backend technology as long as it exposes the API through REST or GraphQL.
Interested? Here are links to more information:
Jamstack official homepage:
Links to a few popular Static Site Generators:
As always, if you would like to reach out send a message through the Contact Us page.
Andy Bernard
Software Solution Architect