What is Islands architecture?
The short answer
Islands architecture renders a page as static HTML and hydrates only the few interactive parts, the islands, instead of the whole page.
Islands architecture, explained
Frameworks like Astro popularised it; the result is content sites that ship very little JavaScript.
Questions people ask about Islands architecture
What is Islands architecture?
Islands architecture renders a page as static HTML and hydrates only the few interactive parts, the islands, instead of the whole page.
Related terms
Hydration is the step where JavaScript attaches to server-rendered HTML in the browser, turning a static-looking page into an interactive one.
AstroAstro is a web framework for content-focused sites that ships zero JavaScript by default and hydrates only the interactive components a page needs.
Static siteA static site is made of pre-built HTML files served the same way to every visitor, which makes it fast, cheap to host and hard to break.
DOMThe DOM is the browser's live, tree-shaped model of a web page; JavaScript reads and changes the DOM to update what visitors see.
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