I spent way too long trying to build a personal blog that actually felt like mine.

I wanted complete control over design without fighting pre-built themes. Over five years, I tried everything—hand-coded static sites, WordPress with its thousand plugins, even gave GatsbyJS a go (as I wrote about here).

Nothing stuck.

WordPress felt bloated. Gatsby’s modern JavaScript ecosystem overwhelmed me. I kept asking myself:

"Is there an SSG built with PHP or Laravel?"

Why PHP? Because that’s what I was actually learning at the time. I wanted something that fit my existing workflow, not another framework to master.

So I searched. And yeah—turns out Jamstack lists tons of SSGs. More than I expected.

Enter Jigsaw

I found Jigsaw, built by Tighten. It uses Blade templates (like Laravel) and works beautifully with TailwindCSS.

Perfect.

Setup was straightforward. The structure felt familiar. And most importantly—I could actually focus on writing instead of wrestling with tooling.

For design inspiration, I borrowed heavily from Kresna’s blog. He uses Hugo (Go-based SSG), and his site nails the UX—clean, minimal, no clutter, easy to navigate. Just content.

I took that concept and tweaked it. Adjusted typography, reworked layouts, added my own touches. What you’re reading now is the result.

Why Jigsaw Works

If you’re a PHP or Laravel developer looking for an SSG:

• Familiar Blade syntax
• TailwindCSS integration out of the box
• Lightweight and fast
• No JavaScript framework overhead

It’s not the flashiest tool, but it gets out of your way and lets you build.

Still shopping for an SSG? Give Jigsaw a shot.