Challenge

The proposition of a static site is to shift the heavy load from the moment visitors request the content to the moment content actually changes. Going back to our kiosk metaphor, think of a scenario where it’s the news agencies who call the kiosk whenever something newsworthy happens. The kiosk operators and scribbles will then compile, format and style the stories and produce a finished newspaper right away, even though nobody ordered one yet. They will print out a huge number of copies (infinite, actually) and pile them up by the storefront. When customers arrive, there’s no need to wait for an operator to become available, place the phone call, pass the results to the scribble, and wait for the final product. The newspaper is already there, waiting in a pile, so the customer can be served instantly. And that is how static site generators work. They take the content, typically stored in flat files rather than databases, apply it against layouts or templates, and generate a structure of purely static HTML files that are ready to be delivered to the users. With an ever-growing ecosystem surrounding static site development, many of the main issues surrounding building static sites are finding answers through new tools. Content management and administrative tasks can be challenging for end-users who don’t have a technical background. The good news is there’s an impressive number of CMSs out there ready to complete your Static site. The difference between those CMSs and traditional CMSs, like WordPress, being that you’ll use the former only for “content management” tasks, not templating and frontend content generation, making it easier for content managers and editors to contribute to the content of the website or the web application. Building websites using Static Site generators is often referred to as the term JAMstack, which stands for JavaScript, APIs, and Markup, and it describes a way of building static, database-free websites. This concept is deceptively simple– the word ‘static’ implies simplicity or a lack of interactivity, but this could not be further from the truth. When we talk about static websites, we’re referring to the technology used to build, power, and serve them.