jigsaw VS Gatsby

I decided to choose jigsaw as I am familiar with the technologies it's built with (PHP , Tailwind for styling and Blade as template engine) as it will be easy to customize if needed besides that, it comes with decent amount of features out of the box, I barely did any customization to it, just followed the installation instructions and got started.

JigSaw

Also if anyone knows of any third-party templates for Jigsaw, I can't find any except the default blog and docs that they have in their documentation.

https://github.com/tighten/jigsaw/blob/main/src/Jigsaw.php

I also would argue that the majority of code I see in other languages is equally or worse than the example you gave.

You can write terribly in any language, Laravel included.

We have ~8 Laravel apps and roughly 40-50 Jigsaw projects that we keep up to date like this.

Take a look at Jigsaw from Tighten: https://jigsaw.tighten.co

Now, as for what runs the site. It is a static site, using Jigsaw as the framework. Jigsaw uses Laravel’s blade templating. Since one of my goals this year is to learn Laravel, it was the perfect fit for my site. GitHub is where I've decided to store my repos, and Netlify watches for changes to my main branch and rebuilds my site.

A Gatsby site uses Gatsby, which leverages React and GraphQL to create fast and optimized web experiences. Gatsby is often used for building static websites, progressive web apps (PWAs), and even full-blown dynamic web applications.

While Next.js is a powerful framework for building server-rendered React applications, it's not the only option for developers looking to create high-performance websites. One notable alternative is Gatsby, a static site generator that leverages React and GraphQL.

The other piece of important information to acknowledge here is that when we say RSCs need a framework, “framework” effectively just means “Next.js.” There are some smaller frameworks (like Waku) that support RSCs. There are also some larger and more established frameworks (like Redwood) that have plans to support RSCs or (like Gatsby) only support RSCs in beta. We will likely see this change once we get React 19 and RSCs are part of the Stable version. However, for now, Next.js is currently the only framework recommended in the official React docs that supports server components.

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GatsbyJS

Babel plugins are everywhere. From being used to remove unwanted exports from files in Gatsby to being used to disallow users from doing re-exports in Nextjs.

In terms of GitHub stars, SSGs like Next.js, Hugo, Gatsby, Docusaurus, Nuxt.js, and Jekyll top the list. Some popular SSGs even host conferences and workshops, providing resources and networking opportunities for those looking to explore more advanced topics in depth.

Flexibility : Developers have complete control over the frontend so they can use their preferred tools and frameworks like React, Next.js, Gatsby, or Remix.

Both Chakra UI and Shadcn supports reusable components and can be used with different frameworks like React, Gatsby, Next etc.