Hey everyone!
I'm looking to understand what the essential components are for creating minimal tech stacks for very simple websites. I'm providing basic pages for clients that mainly need to support form submissions, contain a few informational pages, and have a decent appearance (think brochure sites). I'm particularly interested in security, as I have experience in front-end development using NextJS, but I want to steer clear of frameworks and libraries to keep things lightweight and efficient, both in performance and energy consumption.
I've been thinking about using just HTML, CSS, a smidge of JavaScript, and a reliable hosting service. Would that be sufficient? Are there any common pitfalls I should watch out for?
2 Answers
Yep, that's definitely the way to go. If you want a super simple HTML, CSS, and JS setup but still want some developer experience (like hot module replacement or auto-reloading), check out the mini-devex repo I found.
Absolutely, you can definitely get away with using just HTML, CSS, and a bit of JavaScript. Remember, a framework is just a collection of HTML, CSS, and JS that someone else has assembled. More code can actually increase your vulnerability to security issues.
The main challenge you'll face is redundancy since you might end up repeating code across different pages (like headers and footers). To get around that, consider a static site generator like 11ty to help avoid duplication while still keeping your code clean and library-free.
You could also use PHP includes for that duplication issue. You won't need to dive too deep into PHP; just using includes for your headers and footers can save a lot of hassle.