Just because you're running a static site doesn't mean that the experience can't be rich for your users. A lot of JavaScript components, hosted services, and other resources are available to support static sites where more traditional server-side infrastructure would otherwise be required. While some tools are targeted at specific static generators, many are generator agnostic and can be leveraged to enhance your Wyam site.

Here are some of our favorites. All of the tools on this page are either open source, free to use, or have a free pricing tier. Please suggest additional resources if you know of any that aren't listed here. Some other good places to look are The New Dynamic and the list of Awesome Static Website Services. Also make sure to check out the list of static site hosts for services designed to host your static sites.

Community

Building a community is an important part of many sites, and these tools help with that by providing commenting, discussion forums, and other community functionality.

• Disqus
  Discussion and comments.

• Facebook Comments
  Lets people comment on content on your site using their Facebook account.

• Just Comments
  A hosted comment system that works for every website.

• IntenseDebate
  IntenseDebate is a feature-rich comment system.

• Krowdify
  Inline discussion widget similar to Medium.

• Remarkbox
  A hosted comment system to help engage readers with your content.

• Utterances
  A GitHub issue based commenting system.

Commerce

Turn your static site into a revenue generating machine with these tools that add commercial capabilities.

• Ecwid
  Add an online store for free in 5 minutes.

• FoxyCart
  With FoxyCart, developers create flexible, powerful custom ecommerce in less time.

• Snipcart
  Lean, powerful HTML/JavaScript shopping cart.

Content

Themes, images, and other content to use for your static site. Also includes tools and services to work with content.

• Cloudinary
  Image back-end for web and mobile developers.

• HTML5 UP!
  Spiffy HTML5 site templates.

• Unsplash
  Free (do whatever you want) high-resolution photos.

Editors

These tools help edit your static site, and some even provide full CMS capabilities either locally or hosted.

• ButterCMS
  CMS and blogging engine built for developers.

• CloudCannon
  Build static websites, have your team and clients update inline.

• Contentful
  Contentful is a content management developer platform with an API at its core.

• DatoCMS
  DatoCMS is a fully customizable administrative area for your static websites.

• Directus
  A headless CMS that manages your content, not your workflow.

• Netlify CMS
  An open source CMS for static site generators.

• prismic.io
  A CMS backend for your websites & apps.

• Prose
  Prose is a content editor for GitHub designed for managing websites.

• Sanity
  The fully customizable, headless CMS.

• Surreal CMS
  A simple, powerful, hosted CMS.

Forms

Collecting data can often be just as important as publishing it. These services support forms submission, processing, and analytics in a variety of ways.

• Brisk Forms
  Free and open source forms via email that keeps your email address private.

• elFormo
  Simple form processing and response retrieval via email.

• Flipmail
  Probably the simplest HTML form builder.

• FormKeep
  Just point your form at FormKeep.

• Formspree
  Forms via email.

• Google Forms
  Collect and organize information big & small with Google Forms.

• Jumprock
  Send a form from your static site to our url and we'll deliver it to your inbox.

• MailThis.to
  Turn form submissions into emails.

• Simple Form
  Simple Form allows you to setup forms with any kind of data (including file uploads).

• Staticman
  Staticman handles user-generated content for you and transforms it into data files that sit in your GitHub repository.

Search

These tools let you add structured or unstructured search to your static site.

• Algolia
  Hosted Search API that delivers instant and relevant results from the first keystroke.

• Azure Search
  Cloud search service for web and mobile app development.

• Google Custom Search
  Add a search box to your homepage to help people find what they need on your website.

• lunr.js
  Simple full-text search in your browser.

Sharing

Sharing is caring.

• AddThis
  Make your content shareable with just one click.

• Simple Sharing Buttons Generator
  Create light-weight, mobile-friendly sharing buttons for Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and other social networks.