> Static sites are fundamentally more secure and more performant by default.
I'm afraid to say I consider "performant" to be a term almost without meaning, but especially here where you just mean "faster".
Any true comparison of performance would have to address the functional things that WP can do that a static generated site cannot do without third party services or serverless functions etc.
I mean page speed, like what Google Lighthouse gives you a rating for. Optimising WordPress for this is much more challenging than static pages in my experience.
What functionality are you thinking about here? I find most business websites don't need much beyond static HTML contact forms, nothing that would need serverless functions. A themed search page is a bit more challenging but you can embed Google Search or something like Algolia. Messaging widgets, analytics are usually JavaScript snippets, same with a lot of buy-button
functionality.
How does your contact form work without backend code?
For me the primary benefit of a contact form is obscuring its destination (or piping it into a CRM or ticket system).
Search is important. But other functionality includes things like content embargo/scheduled publication. Or multi-author systems, where not everyone who is writing the content should be doing any damn thing with CLI tools or Git or any such thing), and where there might be editorial approval before it is posted.
Analytics: again, this is something that I personally believe should be achieved in aggregate on the server side, not in JS trackers.
Most simple business brochure sites do not need much, but most simple business users like a control panel they can log in to.
I do not have _any_ customers I'd deploy a static site generator to. It's just not going to happen without an online frontend (or something like Publii, maybe).
I totally agree with you and would like to add another angle. I have a CS degree but have spent my career largely writing SQL. Given time I can figure out most technical things. Therein lies the issue, time!
I got taken by the HN hype over SSGs and moved my site from Drupal (I didn't want to move to Drupal 8) to Hugo. I spent a glorious three weeks porting my site and getting to grips with Hugo hosting my site on Gitlab. As is the case with me I then didn't touch my site for over four months and when I wanted to post a new post I had to learn a few things again. I have a work device and home PC. Posting meant I had to be at home because that's where my pipeline was setup. In the end I just moved to WordPress. I am not a web developer. There are probably smarter ways to setup and post to Hugo but given limited time at my disposal and limited functionality of my site, WordPress just easier for me.
Obviously there's a third party backend somewhere but better than using a WordPress plugin that might have an RCE security exploit or is open to spam at some point. Outsourcing stuff like this can be a good tradeoff.
> But other functionality includes things like content embargo/scheduled publication. Or multi-author systems, where not everyone who is writing the content should be doing any damn thing with CLI tools or Git or any such thing), and where there might be editorial approval before it is posted.
Customers wouldn't use Git directly or a CLI, they would use a headless CMS. I'm not sure which one covers all of the above but there's lots of headless CMS options here:
Aren’t contact forms easily integrated with tools like Netlify functions or AWS Lambdas (which I believe Netlify functions utilize unless they have their own thing now).. ?
But how many developers do you know outside of your own work team who know how to install an AWS Lambda function?
I've been developing a long time and I have Lambda functions in production but the entire process makes me want to bash my head against the wall to the point of unconsciousness.
The idea that we can write off wordpress as bad in one breath and then recommend a "static" site system which is a bunch of HTML pages with a set of specific third party hosting dependencies has always struck me as interesting. JAMstack is a manifesto for dependency on subscription microservice providers.
Sure, it almost makes you wonder when people go through all those hoops, why not just write up a bit of php just for the email/form or whatever minimal dynamic content you need..
Another way to look at it: why would you want to maintain and secure a PHP stack just to receive an email on a simple HTML page? Just use a simple HTML form service for this, upload your page to something like Netlify or GitHub Pages, and outsource the complexity.
I'm afraid to say I consider "performant" to be a term almost without meaning, but especially here where you just mean "faster".
Any true comparison of performance would have to address the functional things that WP can do that a static generated site cannot do without third party services or serverless functions etc.