Sometime ago I gave myself the job of redesigning my personal website. The first version was made using the Laravel Framework.

For this second version I started thinking if Laravel really was needed for a simple portfolio site like mine. After a few days of analyzing the code I wrote for the first version of the site, I discovered that I simply used Laravel bacause I love the Blade Templating Engine that comes with it. After coming to this realization I focused on finding a light, realiable and good tool I could use to simply set up a beautiful, eye-catching personal website where I could just create a markdown file and share my thoughts with everyone. After a few days of looking at a lot of great stuff online, I found the perfect tool for my needs, Jigsaw.

What is Jigsaw

At it’s core, Jigsaw is a framework for building static websites. It helps developers rapidly build static sites using the same modern tooling that you would use when building dynamic web applications.

What sets Jigsaw apart from common .html files

Using Jigsaw instead of creating some .html files and serving them online brings a lot of great features to the table. You have access to a lot of great features from the Laravel Framework but in a light and minimal form.

Some of the features Jigsaw offers are:

• Blade Templates
• Markdown pages
• .blade.md files (Yes, Blade and Markdown mix)
• Global Configuration File (It’s very handy)
• Lots of helper methods
• Collections
• Sorting
• Pagination
• Variables and helper methods
• Laravel Elixir support out of the box

The last design

Here is what the last design of the site looked like, I hope you like the new design I have made. Go take a look at the current design here.

Conclusion

Jigsaw is an awesome framework for creating static websites where you just need to display static content but you still want to use some of the features you love about Laravel, like Blade templates. Getting started is very easy, their documentation is great, and it’s still part of the Laravel community you love and enjoy.