The static site is back, and it never really left

Every few years the industry rediscovers that most pages do not change between requests. A marketing site, a documentation set, a blog: the content shifts when someone publishes, not when someone visits.

What you actually pay for

A server-rendered page costs you compute on every request, plus the operational surface that comes with it — scaling rules, cold starts, a database that has to stay up. A static page costs you one build.

Where it stops working

Static rendering falls over the moment content has to be personalised per visitor, or the catalogue is large enough that a full rebuild takes longer than the publishing cadence. Both are real limits. Neither applies to a blog.

The practical setup

Content lives in a CMS. A webhook fires on publish. CI rebuilds and pushes HTML to a CDN. The whole loop takes a minute or two, and nothing is running in between.