Enhancing Static Sites

March 05, 2018

Static site generators like Jekyll are amazing for producing fast, content-based sites, but what if more functionality is needed? That’s where these third party tools come into play.

Comment System: Disqus

Disqus is a great and easy way to add comments to a blog with sizable traffic.

Gallery/Lightbox Scripts: Photoswipe and Lity

It's fairly common to want to include a gallery or lightbox on a website and content management sites can be especially annoying to use with images. Photoswipe and Lity are awesome and lightweight scripts to integrate in a static site.

Calendar: Tockify

Tockify is an interesting option for embedding a calendar if more functionality is needed over Google Calendar.

Forms: Formspree or Formbucket

For integrating the standard form, Formspree is simple and free. Formbucket is a more advanced option if needed.

Ecommerce: SnipCart

I have not used this yet, but it looks interesting. If I ever needed ecommerce features without the bloat of a platform, I'd give this a shot.

CMS for Developers: Contentful, Siteleaf, Statamic

These are my go-tos over WordPress. Please, anything but WordPress.