I like static website generation but don't want to get locked into a proprietary CMS platform.
> and I love how content changes are versioned in Git
Developers love themselves some Git, but that's probably not the best content workflow tool for people who will write copy which actually accomplishes the goals of the site (like making sales.) Why do developers in this thread act as if it's going to be developers writing the content?
I never said to expose sales people to Git. Have you tried Netlify CMS? All it's doing is giving non-technical users a pretty frontend to edit posts/pages that are stored as Markdown files on GitHub, so it's user-friendly + developer friendly. Check out the video: https://www.netlifycms.org/
Migrating static sites where the content + theme are all stored in Git is a dream compared to WordPress. A lot of WordPress sites aren't even under source control (with automatic security updates live updating the CMS code with no diffs if something goes wrong or it gets hacked), and because some state is stored in the database and other state stored is in the file system, it makes migrations, upgrades and rollbacks overly complicated.
You could use WordPress as a headless CMS, but you've still got to have a plan for how you're going to backups, rollbacks and deploys for content + custom editor features.
> Migrating static sites where the content + theme are all stored in Git is a dream compared to WordPress.
Wordpress (and similar) site migration has been a well solved problem for quite some time. Sure, there might be easier ways to do migration but that's a long ways down my list of things to worry about when choosing my tooling. Ease of migration isn't much of a consideration.
> A lot of WordPress sites aren't even under source control...
A lot of Wordpress sites are a dumpster fire actively attacking the internet. That's not the sites I build and manage. I'll create static websites for my own usage, but not for buyers of my services.
Any headless CMS service (as opposed to self hosted) is really just an option of interfaces on the market. Of the things which matter to buyers, that interface is everything on the back-end (the site as a whole has more important goals.) The buyer doesn't care about ease of migration, how content is stored, etc. Only developers care about these things. So, let's talk about what buyers want, not developers.
If a X headless CMS service can provide the best UI for the buyer, then that's what everyone should default to. If not, then all other bullet points don't matter.
All state is stored in Git and Netlify CMS is just a client-side JS script that talks directly to GitHub. It's an interesting approach that suits some projects. Don't read into this comment more than that.
To say it's more complex than WP is true .. but to completely discount it, is foolish.
I also don't understand the hype. I think it's just good marketing, people don't know the alternatives, and it uses React.
I usually side with Hugo because it's so fast and simple to get running. I don't love the template language but the majority of sites don't need complex template logic anyway.
I see Gatsby similar to Django in that it has "batteries included" for building a modern interactive site. It suits our needs quite well and I'm really happy with it.