Static site generator

Static site generators (Next.js, Astro, Hugo, Eleventy, Gatsby, Jekyll) take input — markdown, MDX, data files, or templates — and produce a directory of static HTML/CSS/JS files. Those files are served from a CDN, which makes pages fast, resilient, and cheap to scale.

The 'static' part is partly historical. Modern static site generators support hybrid rendering — most pages are static, but specific routes can run server logic on demand (ISR, SSR, edge functions, on-demand revalidation). Next.js, Astro, and SvelteKit all blend static and dynamic rendering per-route.

The economic case for static site generators: a 200-page marketing site pre-rendered to static HTML serves at near-zero compute cost from a CDN, handles HN-spike traffic without scaling concerns, and has near-zero attack surface (no runtime database, no server code path). Compared to WordPress (PHP + MySQL on every request), the operational profile is dramatically simpler.

Trade-offs: build time scales with page count (a 50K-page site takes 20+ minutes to build), content updates require a redeploy (mitigated by ISR which revalidates per-page on demand), and any genuinely dynamic content (user-specific data, real-time feeds) still needs server logic. Most sites tolerate the trade-offs because the speed + reliability + cost wins outweigh them.

In 2026, the dominant pattern for marketing sites is Next.js app router with static generation by default, server components for dynamic data fetching, and edge functions for personalization. The 'static' label undersells the architecture — these are hybrid sites that serve static where they can and dynamic where they must.