I don't know much, but I had this idea. My alma mater publishes an annual college magazine in paperbacks. There had been websites on and off always based on wordpress, just static content mostly, and not very pretty.
So I just had this idea, what if we could use a static site generator like Gatsby, to serve every text content statically (the text simply stays in markdown files / react components).
We could use github search api perhaps to search for the content and so on and so forth, and perhaps use firebase for quick authentication and storing static assets and deploying front end code.
We could use DraftJS to provide rich content capabilities to authors and editors of the magazine, and again using Github API dynamically edit files / make new files for new posts and so forth?
What would be the problems if this is done so? What do you think about it? I'd really like to hear more.
It's surely doable. Gatsby is gaining momentum and I'm amazed how fast it is. Your whole architecture is fine, but you should take some notes into consideration:
Making style changes and adding new pages to the website can be hard for non-technical people
While almost everyone can add a new page or make a small change to a WordPress's site using the admin panel, this is not the case with static site generators. At least a basic knowledge of using git or Github is needed to make the smallest change.
Of course this can be avoided if you extend the functionality and grant write control to almost all files using a web interface or another GUI, but that involves a lot of additional extension and coding.
Github API rate limit
GitHub Apps use the installation's minimum rate limit of 5,000 requests per hour. For a relatively small to medium site that's ideal, but you need to prevent any abuse of the system. For example, if you use GitHub's API to search the content, a malicious user can exploit the search and waste your requests, breaking the normal workflow for the whole site. Another solution to that problem would be to search on the client side.
You'll have to create most of the things yourself
As of today, I haven't found a reliable admin panel for Gatsby (or any static site generator). That means you need to use a third-party service or create it by yourself. The last can become a really time consuming task.
That being said, you should definitely try Gatsby or any other static site generator. The fast deployment, the overall speed and the flexibility of the whole system at a cost of around 0$ is like a dream come true.