Virgil Ierubino has been building websites since the early days of the internet (since he was 10!). His agency, Convincible Media, unlike many chasing the latest frontend trends, focuses on the simplest approach for client projects. For him, web development isn’t about stacking the most cutting-edge tools.
It’s about choosing the right tool for the job.
For most of his projects, that means working with Jekyll as an SSG and DatoCMS as the headless CMS. Together, they allow him to build fast, secure, and maintainable websites that avoid unnecessary complexity.
His philosophy is simple: if a website doesn’t need a database or complex JS frameworks, why add them? Most of his client websites are fundamentally about presenting text and images. They don’t require SSR, hydration, or reactivity. Adding more moving parts only increases the risk of things breaking down the road.
Most client sites don’t need complex JavaScript frameworks. They just need to present text and images in different layouts. Why overcomplicate it?
Now, for sure many websites need real-time updates, personalization, or complex interactivity, but for the majority of his clients, static is the right solution. The key is knowing when simplicity is a feature, not a limitation.
So we jumped on a call to chat about his philosophies behind that approach, some concerns on whether or not "Static Is Dead", and got his 2p (since he's British 🫖) on where he thinks Static is headed.
Let's talk Jekyll
I'll admit, it's been a whiiiile since I heard about Jekyll. With everyone seemingly defaulting to Next, Nuxt, Astro, and Svelte in my bubble lately, it was refreshing to chat about this and sprinkle in some Docusaurus, 11ty, and Hugo.
Anyways.
Virgil remains committed to Jekyll. And it’s not about nostalgia, it’s about control. Why?
Jekyll doesn’t force a specific architecture or development style. It doesn’t come with a bunch of opinions or predefined components. It’s purely a build-time tool, with no JavaScript or runtime dependencies. That leaves everything else up to the developer, which is exactly how Virgil likes it.
He appreciates that Jekyll has been around for a long time. It has a mature ecosystem, strong documentation, and an active community. It’s also highly extensible. Since it’s written in Ruby, writing custom plugins to extend its functionality is straightforward. That flexibility lets him fine-tune each project to match a client’s needs without unnecessary bloat.
Jekyll might not be shiny anymore, but it’s rock solid. I’d love to see it get more attention, or for someone to build the next great purely static tool.
Not that we're dismissing the other frameworks by any means. He acknowledges that Astro is an impressive product, and frameworks like Hugo and Eleventy offer great performance. But for him, Jekyll remains the best tool because it keeps things as simple as possible.
Let's make it about us again 💅
Jekyll solves the problem of generating static websites, but content is a separate concern.
Jekyll is making life easier for Virgil, but even though his clients don't necessarily need to know about the technical side of things, they do need a way to update their sites and know everything will work 1, 2, 3, or more months down the line when they have changes to make.
That’s where we come in 💁♀️
Virgil prefers DatoCMS because it offers him the best of both worlds. On the developer side, we provide a highly structured content modelling approach and clean schema management, making it easy to keep projects well-organized. On the editor side, there's a simple, intuitive interface that clients can use without (much) training, one that can be customized and tweaked and extended with plugins.
His clients don’t care what CMS they use. They care about whether they can update their website easily. DatoCMS provides a clean, minimal UI that lets them focus on their content without distractions. The structured content approach also means that content and presentation are fully separated. Clients can edit text, images, and other media while Virgil remains in full control of how that content appears on the final site, how it builds, etc. etc.
One of the few things clients need to get used to is the fact that fully static sites require a short delay between making changes and seeing them live. Instead of hitting "publish" and getting an instant update, they need to wait for the site to rebuild. This usually takes about a minute in most cases, but it’s different from what they may be used to.
In Virgil’s experience, this has never been a dealbreaker. Once clients understand the process, they accept it as part of the tradeoff for a site that’s more secure, faster, and easier to maintain.
OK, but does all this scale?
Now, let's finally get into talking about the static approach in 2025.
A common argument against static sites is that they don’t scale. Virgil disagrees.
People assume static sites don’t scale. That’s a myth. The only real question is: how often do you actually update your content?
The real question isn’t whether static sites scale, it’s how often a site needs to be updated. If a website has thousands of pages but only gets updated once a day, a five-minute build time isn’t a problem. If content needs to change every five minutes, then static might not be the best choice, something with partial hydration or a more dynamic approach might make more sense.
But in most cases he's seen, websites tend to be, essentially, “cool interactive brochures”, and don't need all the dynamic functionality of many modern frameworks.
For Virgil’s clients, frequent content updates aren’t the norm. They update their website a few times a week at most. In that scenario, the benefits of static outweigh the minor inconvenience of waiting for a rebuild.
Why call the database if you don’t need to? Why introduce that complexity when a static build does the job perfectly?
Static sites also scale exceptionally well for high-traffic scenarios. Since they don’t rely on a traditional backend server, they can be deployed entirely to a CDN. That means pages load almost instantly, even under heavy load. There’s no risk of a database getting overwhelmed or a server struggling to handle concurrent users.
Static websites are faster, more secure, and scale incredibly well because they run on CDNs instead of constantly hitting a server.
Another advantage is security. With no database or server-side code, there’s very little attack surface. There’s no risk of SQL injection, no server vulnerabilities, and no need for constant security patches. For clients who prioritize reliability and security, static sites offer a level of peace of mind that dynamic sites can’t match.
Why Static ain't dead
Static sites had "a moment" a few years ago. There was a wave of excitement around static site generators as an alternative to WP and other traditional CMS platforms. Then, the trend shifted towards hybrid approaches. Newer frameworks started blending static rendering with dynamic capabilities.
Virgil sees this evolution as part of the natural cycle of web development, which as we know, goes full circle every couple of years. As complexity increases, there’s often a point where people will start to re-appreciate the simplicity of earlier approaches.
He believes static sites might see another resurgence. As more devs become frustrated with overheads of modern JS-heavy frameworks, they may rediscover the benefits of a truly static-first approach.
For that to happen though, SSGs, both the old and new, like Jekyll, need more visibility. Jekyll is still actively maintained and used by tens of thousands of websites, but it doesn’t get the same hype as newer tools. Virgil hopes to see either Jekyll get more recognition or for a new purely static site generator to emerge that captures the same level of excitement as an Astro or Svelte.
Virgil isn’t against modern web frameworks. He simply believes in using the simplest possible tool for the job. For most websites, that means a static site generator like Jekyll combined with a headless CMS like DatoCMS. Static had a moment, then hybrid frameworks took over. But as complexity grows, there’s always room for a return to simplicity.
For Virgil, static is far from dead. It’s just waiting for more to remember why it worked so well in the first place.