Static Site Generation (SSG)

Static Site Generation (SSG) pre-renders all pages at build time, producing plain HTML files that can be served directly from a CDN. This approach offers the fastest possible load times since there's no server-side processing per request.

SSG is ideal for content-heavy sites like blogs, documentation, marketing pages, and portfolios. Frameworks like Astro, Next.js, Hugo, Gatsby, and Eleventy make it easy to build static sites with modern developer experiences.

Benefits include maximum performance (pre-built HTML served from CDN edge nodes), excellent SEO (complete HTML for crawlers), security (no server to attack), low cost (static hosting is nearly free), and reliability (no server to crash).

The main limitation is that content updates require a rebuild and redeploy. Incremental Static Regeneration (ISR) in Next.js and on-demand rebuilds address this by regenerating specific pages without rebuilding the entire site.