Bridgetown
Written by Arkadiusz Gorecki
Last update: 4/17/2024
Bridgetown gets rid of all deprecated Jekyll configurations. It comes with a default configuration of Webpack to handle building and exporting frontend assets such as Javascript and Typescript, CSS/SCSS, and related files that are imported through Webpack (fonts, images, etc.)
Sourcing data is very straightforward in terms of local files. Default config comes with support for posts in _posts folder. What makes making blog-aware websites very fast.
To fetch data from an external source you need to know the basics of Ruby, as it required writing a function (plugin in fact) which will be run during the build process, for example:
class LoadPostsFromAPI < SiteBuilder
def build
get "https://domain.com/posts.json" do |data|
data.each do |post|
doc "#{post[:slug]}.md" do
front_matter post
categories post[:taxonomy][:category].map { |category| category[:slug] }
date Bridgetown::Utils.parse_date(post[:date])
content post[:body]
end
end
end
end
end
├── frontend
│ ├── javascript
│ └── styles
├── node_modules
├── plugins
├── src
│ ├── _components
│ ├── _data
│ ├── _layouts
│ ├── _posts
│ ├── 404.html
│ └── index.md
├── bridgetown.config.yml
├── Gemfile
├── Gemfile.lock
├── start.js
├── sync.js
├── yarn.lock
├── webpack.config.js
└── package.json
One of the core features of Bridgetown is that it can be extended by custom plugins. Starting from fetching data from external API, adding support for new markup or template language to taking full control over the build process.
Bridgetown despite being very fresh, has a pretty lively Discord community. Everyone is welcome to ask questions or just chat.
First, you need to install Ruby, that's the harder step if you don't have installed. You can find here instructions on how to make it done.
Next, you can install Bridgetown
gem install bridgetown -N
To create a new Bridgetown website, run:
bridgetown new mysite
The build is a very simple process, you need to run only one command and the production bundle will be created in the "output" folder which can be later pushed to any static files hosting provider, eg: Netlify or Vercel.
Bridgetown is still way behind the competitors, but it's worth keeping an eye on. Especially, if you like Ruby. It's still in its early days but in the future, it can bring some fresh fruit.