The real cost of ignoring static site generation
The gap between knowing this and actually doing it is where most teams lose ground. Nobody bills you for neglecting static site generation. The cost shows up somewhere else.
The question is rarely whether something can be built, but what it costs to keep running afterwards. If it only works because one person remembers to do something, it does not work yet.
Where the cost lands
- Time spent on work that should not have been necessary
- Enquiries that quietly never arrive
- Static files are the fastest and cheapest thing to serve
- Rework, once the problem is finally visible
No server means dramatically less to attack or patch. Getting it slightly wrong is survivable. Ignoring it entirely is not. Assume whoever inherits this will have half your context and none of your patience.
A reasonable first step
Rebuilds can be automated on every content change. There is a version of this that is over-engineered, and it is worth avoiding. It is worth deciding this deliberately rather than inheriting whatever the last person set up.
How to tell if yours is fine
Most development decisions are really maintenance decisions wearing a different hat. Three things worth confirming about static site generation before you move on:
- Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
- Static files are the fastest and cheapest thing to serve — and you know whether that is true here
- There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped
None of this needs a rewrite. Most of it is a morning's work once someone decides to do it.