A next-generation, progressive site generator & fullstack framework, powered by Ruby.
Built upon venerated open source languages & technologies such as Ruby, Puma, Roda, and esbuild, Bridgetown puts power back in the hands of individuals to create extraordinary things.
While your competitors are wrestling with complicated build tools, limited programming idioms, and mountains of boilerplate, you’re out changing the world.
Version 2.0.0.beta3 released Nov 16, 2024. Looking for stable release documentation?
Listen to what they’re saying about Bridgetown:
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Bridgetown is so cool. It’s the most fun I’ve had outside of Rails in a long time.
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Coherent, thought through, well-structured, yet powerful and efficient SSG. This is GREAT!
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With Rails 7, Hotwire, Stimulus, Strada, Bridgetown, Render, and things like this, I believe Ruby is about to have a renaissance.
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Within a very short period of time I went from a blank VSCode editor to fully designed and deployed website using Bridgetown! 👏
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I made my Bridgetown site ‘come alive’ with automatic redeploys where the site’s content is updated via an API. In lieu of a Frankenstein emoji… BRRAAAAAINS!! 🧟🧟🧟
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If you need a static site generator and like Ruby, go for Bridgetown. I’m using it on 3 projects right now and it’s awesome.
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I wish more new tools were doing this well out of the box. Congrats, and good luck!
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Every time I turn around — something new from Bridgetown.
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I just started my first project using Bridgetown today and I’m already loving it!
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Bridgetown rules.
Build fast. Deploy fast. Serve fast.
Like the Ruby language itself, Bridgetown is optimized for web developer happiness. Express yourself in code which is elegant and maintainable. Bundled configurations and resources like our Bridgetown Community Site and Discord Chat help you quickly get a leg up. Go from zero to hero in no time with HTML-first build artifacts and rapid Git-based deployment on services like Render.
Bridgetown is made possible by the generous contributions of our GitHub sponsors. Please consider becoming a sponsor today and support the ongoing development of open source, Ruby-first & HTML-first software projects.
Super-dee-dooper features galore.
Bridgetown’s philosophy is if we take the time to build what you’ll actually need, you won’t have to. Without having to hunt for any additional add-ons or extra recipes, Bridgetown gives you right out of the box from day one:
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Static Site Generator
All of the features you’ve grown to love from the world of static site generation. Front Matter. Markdown. Easy permalinks. File-based content deployment with Git history and atomic builds. Data transformation pipelines. Paginated archives. It’s all here and ready to roll.
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Powerful Content Engine
Set up collections for whatever types of content you need. Define taxonomies. Create relationships between different pieces of content. And when you need to, easily generate new content at build-time (or in real-time!) by connecting to a Headless CMS and other web APIs.
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World-Class Template Engine
Actually more than one. Actually three! Liquid. ERB. Serbea. Increasing levels of power and sophistication with each step. Liquid, created by Shopify, is easy to get started with. Upgrade to ERB for the same syntax Ruby on Rails employs. Or choose Serbea, a superset of ERB which brings the best of Ruby and Liquid templates together.
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Componentized View Layer
Best practices in modern web design revolve around components, discrete building blocks of visual and semantic functionality. Use Bridgetown components for a modular approach to your site design, pull in GitHub’s ViewComponent for even more power, or sprinkle frontend web components on top for that extra sizzle.
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Fullstack Framework
Some projects don’t need an SSR backend. But for the ones that do, Bridgetown’s got you covered. It comes with Roda baked-in, one of the fastest Ruby web frameworks in the biz. And when we say “baked-in”, we literally mean it. Create a regular view template and add a dynamic route block at the top which can handle all the requests you’ll throw at it. Need even more power? Mount a Rails API using Rack. All in one monorepo. Now that’s a stack.
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Modern Frontend Build System
Bridgetown sets you up with blazing-fast, zero-config esbuild & PostCSS. Add modern CSS starter kits and JavaScript libraries in a performant way with a few simple commands. Install comprehensive component libraries such as Shoelace for rapid UI development. Go big with interactive functionality or stay minimalist for that “zero JS” experience. It’s totally your choice.
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Sky-High Plugin Architecture
Bridgetown might just be the easiest way to get started learning and writing Ruby code. Craft custom plugins to enhance your site build and content with a straightforward DSL and make huge strides in only a few lines! And if you already have experience writing Ruby apps in other frameworks, you should feel right at home.
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Sensible Deployment Strategy
For static-only projects, you can deploy Bridgetown sites literally anywhere which supports HTML/CSS/JS files. Jamstack-style hosts are great options for performance and security. For a full-stack production setup with database access, Redis caching, and all the rest, Render is our recommended hosting platform.
Then when you’re ready, bundled configurations and plugins can take you even farther. Add SEO/social graph support, news feeds, inlined SVGs, asset management integration, headless CMS integration, automated testing, islands architecture, Shoelace, Lit SSR + Hydration, and a whole lot more.