The author of the article created a static website for a newspaper using Directus as its CMS. The initial setup was slow due to pulling data from the GraphQL API on every page load, so they decided to roll their own static site generator in Python. They used Pixi as their project manager and set up the necessary dependencies, including gql-with-aiohttp, jinja2, slugify, dateutil, and dart-sass. The author created a query that fetches all published articles and issues from Directus, which is then executed by a Python function. The static site generator compiles templates using Jinja2, providing the necessary data to the templates. The author also built a sitemap and implemented short-form post support with HTMX. The project uses GitHub Actions for deployment, triggering deployments on push events and setting up a Directus flow to rebuild the website when content changes.