Gatsby, what’s going on, pup?

Gatsby is a popular open-source, static website generator built with React that helps developers build fast and performant websites. In this tutorial, we will cover the basics of Gatsby and how to create a simple website using Gatsby.

What You’ll Need:

• Node.js and NPM installed on your machine
• Basic knowledge of React and GraphQL

Step 1: Installing Gatsby
To start using Gatsby, you will need to install the Gatsby CLI tool. To do this, open your terminal and run the following command:

npm install -g gatsby-cli

Step 2: Creating a New Gatsby Site
Once the Gatsby CLI tool is installed, you can create a new Gatsby site by running the following command in your terminal:

gatsby new my-first-gatsby-site

This will create a new Gatsby site in a folder named my-first-gatsby-site.

Step 3: Running Your Gatsby Site
To run your Gatsby site locally, navigate to the folder where your site was created and run the following command in your terminal:

cd my-first-gatsby-site
gatsby develop

This will start the Gatsby development server, and you can view your site by visiting http://localhost:8000 in your browser.

Step 4: Understanding the Gatsby Project Structure
When you create a new Gatsby site, you will see several folders and files in the project directory. Here are a few key folders and files:

• src/: This folder contains all the source code for your website, including React components, styles, and pages.
• pages/: This folder contains the individual pages of your website. Each file in this folder represents a different page on your site.
• gatsby-config.js: This file contains configuration options for your Gatsby site, such as plugins and site metadata.

Step 5: Creating Pages with Gatsby
To create a new page in your Gatsby site, you can create a new file in the src/pages/ folder. For example, if you create a file named about.js in the src/pages/ folder, you can access the page by visiting http://localhost:8000/about.

Step 6: Adding Content to Your Gatsby Site
Gatsby uses GraphQL to query data for your site. You can define GraphQL queries in your components to fetch data from various sources, such as local files or external APIs. To add content to your Gatsby site, you can create a GraphQL query in your component file and use the data to render content on the page.

Step 7: Styling Your Gatsby Site
Gatsby allows you to style your site using CSS, Sass, or styled-components. You can add styles to your components by importing CSS files or using styled-components to create styled components.

Step 8: Building Your Gatsby Site
Once you are happy with your Gatsby site, you can build the site for production by running the following command in your terminal:

gatsby build

This will generate a public/ folder containing the static files for your site that you can deploy to a web server.

Conclusion
In this tutorial, we covered the basics of Gatsby and how to create a simple website using Gatsby. Gatsby offers a powerful and efficient way to build fast and performant websites, making it a popular choice among developers. We hope this tutorial was helpful in getting you started with Gatsby and we encourage you to explore more advanced features and functionalities of Gatsby to build even more amazing websites.