When static site generation is worth the effort

The advice here is unglamorous, which is probably why it gets skipped. Static site generation is not free, and pretending otherwise leads to bad decisions.

Code gets read far more often than it gets written, and usually by someone with less context than the author had. Most teams find the first pass takes an afternoon and the maintenance takes minutes a month.

When it is worth it

Static files are the fastest and cheapest thing to serve. Where this goes wrong is almost never a lack of knowledge. Write the reasoning down alongside the decision, because the reasoning is what changes first.

When it is not

If nothing downstream depends on it and nobody is complaining, it can wait. There is a version of this that is over-engineered, and it is worth avoiding.

How to decide

Rebuilds can be automated on every content change. The reasoning matters more than the rule, because the rule has exceptions. Assume whoever inherits this will have half your context and none of your patience.

The short version

The question is rarely whether something can be built, but what it costs to keep running afterwards. 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

Most of the value here comes from doing the first two things, not all of them.