How to Hygraph

In the world of static site generators, one rule remains constant - the build is the gospel. Whatever was at build time will be until a new build occurs. But sometimes our data, you know, changes.

Hygraph is a headless, GraphQL-Native, Content Management System. It provides ultimate flexibility in how you create, manage and deliver your data in the era of the JAMstack and the omnipresent digital touchpoints.

This tale tells of a time before now, when Gatsby.js (a static site generator that combines React and GraphQL) was only using GraphQL internally. Gatsby could fetch data from static files, contentful APIs, Wordpress databases, and mongoDB, but it never fetched the seed data with GraphQL. Angel, the original plugin author and project leader, looked into static site generators for his personal website remake. He thought to himself, “Well, that doesn’t make much sense, does it?” And the idea was born.

This is a guest post by Jeff Escalante. One of the great advantages of headless CMS' is that they are able to be consumed by a wide variety of different applications and build tools, rather than being tied specifically to a web frontend. And today we'll be talking about using Hygraph to create a static site - an architecture that suits many use cases much better than using a dynamic site or single page app.