Static Ultra aims to be easy to use, easy to maintain, portable and useful. But admittedly, a few sacrifices had to be made to achieve this.
This page aims to be as honest as possible about the potential drawbacks of using Static Ultra, so that you can make an informed choice.
Static Ultra relies on client-side JavaScript to load content, mix it together and deliver the final result to the visitor's web browser. In my experience, generally search engines like Google and Bing are able to index and crawl content generated this way. But, to put it in a straight forward manner, I can't guarantee it. There may not be a problem at all, but I'm putting this information here because at the moment I simply don't know.
Oddly enough, search engines which don't parse JavaScript at all are pretty good with Static Ultra, since due to the way it works your page's content is always right there in the page, no JavaScript involved.
I am keeping an eye on the situation and will remove or update this section once Static Ultra's been out there a while and I know more.
At this point I would say if search engines are important for your website (e.g. you are running a business), Static Ultra may not be the right solution for you.
I have done my best to ensure that at all stages of Static Ultra's loading process, search engines are delivered the contents of your pages.
Static Ultra is by no means slow. You've already seen its speed, since the site you're looking at right now is a Static Ultra site.
But, on "first page load", that is, the first time someone visits your site, Static Ultra is a little slower than a traditional pure static webpage.
This is because Static Ultra must load its initialiser, your config file and then Static Ultra itself, which obviously isn't necessary in a non-SU page.
Subsequent page loads however are very fast, since Static Ultra, your site-wide resources and theme are already loaded and cached. Static Ultra also takes over navigation (internal link clicks) and only loads exactly what it needs to!
Static Ultra is equipped so that you can write custom JavaScript and use it on your website, but you have to do it a certain way (there is a tutorial later). Static Ultra works best when you put your scripts into functions or classes inside of .js files, add the file paths to the config, your theme, or the appropriate arrays in your pages, and then call/create those functions/classes from the appropriate Static Ultra entry point. Static Ultra doesn't work so well with inline JavaScript, that is, JavaScript code entered directly in your HTML files.
Personally I've not had a situation as of yet where this has been an issue, and thus far Static Ultra's entry points have always gotten the job done without a hitch!
If I think of or discover anything else, I'll add it here!
Oh, someone's still here? Alright let's Get Started with Static Ultra!