For the benchmarks, I just went with the most popular SSGs. Happy to add others to the list! I’m not sure which ones use a CDN. Even if they use a CDN, my site is likely to be faster still.
Just read your latest post (https://dri.es/why-content-management-systems-can-outperform-static-site-generators)!! Even if this thread was not the catalyst, I'm happy by the discussion (which, btw, I've started as more like a curiosity thing than anything else. I totally understand the dogfood initiative).
It's late here but I later I will bring back some points:
1* the importance of clicking "publish" and getting the results. IMHO it is only useful for news sites and such
2* the benchmark table. I think it was a deliberated list of competitors that do not properly use CND/cache/Cloudflare or proper use of 3rd party libraries.
anyway, I totally can see the benefit of the workflow. 1000x better, I can attest to it!
PS: I would NEVER worry about `https://dri.es/admin` if eventually a zero-day PHP bug eventually appears since a static site is essentially stateless.
Discussion
Most definitively, given the number of images they use. Dri.es is a unique case, coz you do not use almost any image or script and the home page is super minimalistic. The such experiment should use the same site in all systems. Iike exporting dri.es as plain HTML and hosting in an equivalent server/CDN.
Would be nice to check the server requirements to run cms+caching vs an HTTP server like Nginx to achieve the same results.
All this will address only the argued performance gains from STG, not the workflow.