President of Internet Marketing & Development at 9thCO, a Canadian digital agency focused on B2B & ecommerce development and marketing.
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In the world of technology, it’s rare that something entirely new comes along. Most changes are incremental—an improvement of a previous/similar technology. With regard to the internet, there are major advances we all remember: social media, mobile responsiveness and blockchain, to name a few. However, unbeknownst to most, the fundamental building blocks of website technology were completely reinvented recently, and relatively few people seem to be fully aware of the implications.
I’m referring to the advent of front-end frameworks and decoupled architecture (i.e., Jamstack).
Understandably, this sounds technical and boring, which is precisely why so few seem to care to know what it means. But I assure you that it is one of the most significant things to happen to the internet in decades, and the purpose of this article is to explain why you should care about it.
A Brief History Of Web Development
You’re likely familiar with HTML—the basic building block of websites. You’re also no doubt comfortable with using a content management system (CMS) like WordPress. These work, but with serious drawbacks.
Having built websites for many years, we’ve seen the same problems repeatedly: Custom designs take months to receive approval and implement. Sites are launched, but SEO wasn’t considered; rankings take a nosedive. Holiday traffic spikes bring down a site until costly server resources can be added. Outdated plug-ins offer security holes, and hackers gain control of the site. It was apparent that the underlying technologies that “run” the internet are just not that great.
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All it took was for one enterprising engineer at Facebook to ask, “Why are we still doing this?” and an idea was born that would become one of the most favored technologies today, quietly rewriting the very rules of the internet in the background.
It Started With React
Initially, the idea was simple: Let’s do away with the old model of building websites from the ground up. It’s cumbersome for each user interaction to go back to the server to process, which then gets sent back to the browser to be loaded.
A new way of thinking/coding emerged called React (or React.js). The idea is to think of webpages as interfaces that use components to transmit information and actions without leaving the page, creating a much more fluid, dynamic and user-friendly experience. So, you no longer needed to build and navigate a website with many pages—instead you could build the site much like an app, with components that work together.
The results? Faster build times equal happier developers. Much faster (nearly instantaneous) websites equal happier clients and end users. As of the writing of this article, React has been referenced as the “most wanted” developer technology for five years running. There were initially issues with SEO, but add-on components and new frameworks (e.g., Next.js) solved those.
But there were still deficiencies requiring solutions.
Next Up: Jamstack
In a nutshell, the notion of “Why are we still doing this?” began to catch on. Surely there must have been a better way than continuing to build monolithic websites that keep all of their data and processing on a single server (prone to hacking and resource problems).
From this was born the Jamstack architecture, which stands for JavaScript, APIs and markup.
JavaScript
The JavaScript portion is explained above, with React or similar libraries used to rapidly build highly responsive applications.
APIs
Application programming interfaces are what make the Jamstack architecture so secure and scalable. Basically, all of the functionality of the website (authentication, payment processing, data storage, etc.) can be tied in via external services, which offloads any possible security liabilities or resource constraints. So there’s no hacking, and no need to add on more server resources to handle traffic spikes.
Markup
This final step is conceptually very simple but also incredibly powerful. Instead of using a system like WordPress that processes each page and sends it to the browser (i.e., server-side rendering), a Jamstack site is entirely pre-built as HTML and delivered to a content delivery network (CDN). That way, anyone who visits the site receives the site files that are already processed, and from a server that is closest to them. If I haven’t said this enough already, this translates to much faster websites.
Out With The Old
As React was gaining popularity, and Jamstack was entering the scene, other teams were also asking, “Why?” Design teams challenged the practice of designing every site anew when most visual components are pretty much the same. As a result, user interface (UI) libraries were created, allowing teams to rapidly assemble the visuals of a website in a fraction of the time.
Infrastructure teams began to question paying for large server resources 24/7 just to support a few seasonal spikes throughout the year. Thus serverless functions arose that allow developers to move functionality to cloud providers, who in turn dynamically provide only the resources needed at the time, resulting in massive cost savings.
What’s In It For Me?
So why should all of these things matter? They seem to be mainly technical considerations, and realistically they are.
However, if any of the following apply to your business, then you may want to consider React and/or Jamstack:
• Do you want to save time (and money) on developing a new site?
• Would your site benefit from being almost completely unhackable?
• Are site speed and SEO important to you and your customers?
Clearly, the impacts on businesses are profound. It’s time to let go of the “old” internet and embrace this brilliant next phase.
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Author: Justin Cook, Forbes Councils Member
