What is Static site generation?
Also called: SSG, Pre-rendering
The short answer
Static site generation builds every page's HTML ahead of time, at deploy, so pages are served instantly from a CDN without any work per request.
Static site generation, explained
It is the fastest and cheapest way to serve pages that are the same for everyone, like marketing pages, docs and encyclopedias.
Questions people ask about Static site generation
What is Static site generation?
Static site generation builds every page's HTML ahead of time, at deploy, so pages are served instantly from a CDN without any work per request.
Related terms
A 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.
Server-side renderingServer-side rendering builds a page's HTML on the server for each request, so the visitor and search engines receive readable content immediately.
Incremental static regenerationIncremental static regeneration serves pre-built static pages but rebuilds individual pages in the background on a schedule or on demand, so content stays fresh without full redeploys.
CDNA CDN is a network of servers around the world that keeps copies of a site's files and serves each visitor from the location nearest to them.
Part of the Web Encyclopedia by Apex Flow Digital. Definitions are general knowledge, kept current, with no invented statistics.