Getting started with static site generation
It is rarely the thing that gets a project approved, and often the thing that decides how it goes. A short on-ramp to static site generation for teams who have not touched it before.
The question is rarely whether something can be built, but what it costs to keep running afterwards. The practical test is whether someone new to the project could tell, in a minute, that it had been handled.
The reason this keeps coming up
Static files are the fastest and cheapest thing to serve. The reasoning matters more than the rule, because the rule has exceptions. The teams that stay on top of it are the ones who put it on a calendar rather than a wish list.
Your first week
- Find out what is already in place
- No server means dramatically less to attack or patch
- Change one thing and measure it
Rebuilds can be automated on every content change. It is worth being explicit about, because assumptions differ quietly. It is the sort of thing that looks like polish right up until it costs you an enquiry.
In practice
Code gets read far more often than it gets written, and usually by someone with less context than the author had. Three things worth confirming about static site generation before you move on:
- Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
- No server means dramatically less to attack or patch — and you know whether that is true here
- There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped
If you want a second opinion on how yours is set up, ask.