In recent years, the JAMstack architecture has gained popularity for building fast and secure websites. JAMstack stands for JavaScript, APIs, and Markup. It emphasizes decoupling the frontend from the backend, pre-rendering pages for speed and security.

Gatsby is a React-based static site generator that aligns well with the JAMstack philosophy. It allows developers to build static websites using modern tools and practices.

Getting Started with Gatsby

To create a new Gatsby site, you'll need Node.js installed. Then, you can use the Gatsby CLI to set up your project.

npm install -g gatsby-cli
gatsby new my-gatsby-site
cd my-gatsby-site
gatsby develop

This will start a development server at http://localhost:8000, where you can view your site.

Creating Pages

Gatsby uses React components for pages. Create a new file at src/pages/about.js:

import React from "react"

export default function About() {
  return <div>About us</div>
}

This will create a page accessible at http://localhost:8000/about.

Adding Markdown Content

You can source content from Markdown files using plugins. First, install the necessary plugins:

npm install gatsby-source-filesystem gatsby-transformer-remark

Then, configure them in gatsby-config.js:

module.exports = {
  plugins: [
    {
      resolve: `gatsby-source-filesystem`,
      options: {
        name: `pages`,
        path: `${__dirname}/src/pages/`,
      },
    },
    `gatsby-transformer-remark`,
  ],
}

Now, you can create Markdown files in src/pages/, and Gatsby will transform them into pages.

Deploying the Site

Once your site is ready, you can build it:

gatsby build

This will generate static files in the public directory, which you can deploy to any static hosting service.

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By leveraging Gatsby and the JAMstack architecture, you can build fast, secure, and scalable websites with modern development practices.