# Launching our Blazing-Fast Blog Posted on September 17, 2019 by _Travis Nesbit, MD_ _Specter Tech Solutions_ is happy to announce the launch of our _official_ and **blazing fast** blog. Please keep us bookmarked so that we can provide you with the latest news in the world of information technology, and updates about Specter Tech Solutions in general. ## Intent and Scope of Our Blog There are two major reasons to have a content-rich, high quality blog. - Attract visitors for monetary gain (why deny it?) - Provide education for public benefit As a business who is invested in both our success and the success of others through the highest-quality information technology solutions available, we want to do both of those things. We'll be hitting on a number of interesting topic and technologies. _This is not a technical blog_. It may have some technical posts, but largely the posts will be _written to a level that most tech-savvy enthusiasts, especially in the entrepreneurial space, can understand_. The topics covered will include, but are not limited to: - Security - Disaster recovery - Workflow - Productivity - Networking - Desktop support - Programming - Healthcare / HIPAA - Industry Best-Practice - Tutorials - And, much more. We hope you'll follow us over time. We're confident we'll make it worth your time! ## Overview of the Blog's Technology Our blog, as you can see, much faster than most. This is because it is different from most. This is a blog built as a _static website_ as opposed to popular blogs built as _dynamic websites_ such as [WordPress](https://wordpress.org/). If you're interested in the technical details, we're happy to fill you in below, so keep reading. ### Static vs. Dynamic Websites _Static websites_ are websites where the _pages do not change_, largely speaking. Your computer asks a web server to send a web page to you, and it does just that. It's almost as if you handed a physical letter to another person. It doesn't sound very high-tech, but it's _very quick_ and _very easy to understand_ by both humans and computers. _Dynamic websites_ have either web servers (server-side render) or web browsers (client-side render) _making changes constantly_ to the structure of the website. This is actually really cool for a number of reasons. But, primarily because they're more programmable than static websites (generally). _There are a few catches_, however. Server-side render means things slow down and there is yet another opportunity for an attacker to infiltrate your business or personal life by attacking that server. And, client-side render leads to a page being delivered which does not have a solid structure, making it a bit more challenging for web bots to crawl their contents. It also introduces an initial increase in loading time as the whole website is sent at the time of the request rather than just a page at a time. ### Reviewing our Speed In short, this means that when you view a page that all the web server does is send it to you. There is no _processing_ that goes on by the computer. This means that things arrive to the user and load **very fast**. How fast? Most of our pages yield a _Google Website Speed result of 95-99%_ and _load in one second or less on a desktop, and two seconds or less on a mobile device_. That is fast! There is quite a bit that goes into it, but the two major technologies that make this possible are: 1. [React](https://reactjs.org/) - A component-based, declarative JavaScript library. 2. [Gatsby](https://gatsbyjs.org/) - A static website generator. ### React [React](https://reactjs.org/) is a wonderful JavaScript library that resolves many of the problems we deal with in the development of web pages using classic HTML and JavaScript. The key features that we love about React is that it is both _declarative_ and _component based_. It's important to emphasize the fact that React is component based. This allows for much simpler re-use of code. Code that can be re-used easily scales better because it allows for more rapid development. One of the great things about these components is that the HTML (and the CSS if you prefer) is written inline with the JavaScript, a style of code called _JSX code_. Together, this makes developing a modern web application much more intuitive as the three major languages are _working together toward a goal in the same view_. However, _React produces a dynamic website_ rather than a static website. And, that has some negative implications for SEO. Therefore, as much as we loved React for web application development, _it wasn't ideal for our case_. ### Gatsby [Gatsby](https://gatsbyjs.org/) _is a static website generator_. And a lot more. It's really a fantastic framework with great plugins that allow you to make premium, blazing-fast websites in a more programmatic and extensible manner. We'll focus on the former benefit of Gatsby. The latter are numerous and out of the scope of this blog. _Gatsby uses React at its core_. So, you get the excellent application programmers interface (API) React offers. It augments its functionality, however, by pumping out individual pages before it is uploaded to a website. This means that ultimately you get _all of the benefits of React plus all of the benefits of the more classic static websites_ which are easier for web bots to crawl and index. ## What's Next? In this blog post, we wanted to get our viewers' feet wet. This was intended to be a quick introduction to the blog post, and a to give our readers a little bit of fun information to learn. In the future, we'll go into the topics listed above. And, we'll make it fun! Additionally, our discussion on [React](https://reactjs.org/) and [Gatsby](https://gatsbyjs.org/) was very brief and superficial. We definitely plan on getting into the technologies in more detail. While we really can respect the incredibly powerful, and user-friendly nature of [WordPress](https://wordpress.org/) we're huge proponents of leveraging cutting edge, modern development solutions to make your business stand out on the web. Thanks for reading, and stay-tuned for more! ## About the author: _Travis Nesbit, MD_ Travis received his BS in Biology with a concentration in ecology from CSU San Marcos. He received his MD (medical doctor) from and completed a residency in Internal Medicine at the UC Irvine. He has worked for UC Irvine in their Executive Health Program, and for the exciting new tech-enabled medical start-up Forward. He currently practices medicine part time at Concentra and spends the rest of his time as the Director of Software Development at Specter Tech Solutions. He has a life-long love for computers and computer information systems. Travis spends most of his waking moments learning everything he can about them, how to make them do what he wants, and how to secure them. Travis brings a unique blend of skills together and is moving to excel in the health IT space. In his free time, he also enjoys lifting weights and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.