our business depends on its website. After all, that online domain is where customers purchase products from you, to learn about your company, interact with your employees, and get an overall positive impression about what your business has to offer and how you go about doing what you do.
Just what is a static site?
First, let’s answer this question. Back in the early days of web development, every website was a static site. HTML files were served up that might country email list contain images and links, and although those elements functioned, their only function was to deliver assets to the page. That’s why they were static—unless the developer manually made changes, the content never changed. It was static.
These types of sites were fine for personal and small use-cases. But as more and more businesses hopped onto the web train, the static site was revealed to be too limiting.
That’s where the dynamic site came into being. These types of sites could dynamically change content and deliver more and more information and products to consumers and the masses. To manage dynamic sites, Content Management Systems (such as WordPress) were created.
But for static sites, it was all about hard-coding HTML and CSS. Those were the only 2 languages you needed to build the 1990s website of your dreams.
Why use static sites now?
We’re well beyond the 90s and static the future of everyday robots websites. So why are they making a comeback? The primary answer for that is automation and DevOps. Thanks to these 2 technological advancements, it’s possible to make use of static sites in a way that can actually benefit a business.
But it’s not exactly what you think.
Your entire website won’t be based on static content. Static site generators are used to enhance dynamic sites. These generators are a combination of hand-coded static sites and full-blown CMS. This amalgamation of the 2 looks something like this:
- You generate a static HTML page website that borrows concepts like templates (from the world of CMS).
- Content for these sites can be extracted from databases, markdown files, APIs, or any storage location.
- Site generation is then done in a staging server.
- The resulting HTML files are then deployed to the live web server.
Unlike the original static sites of the 90s, these types of sites aren’t unchanging – quite the opposite. Because static site generators work on the concept of templates, it’s very easy to build and deploy similar sites from the same template, but with different content. This can be automated so quickly that your users would never know the difference between static and dynamic content.
But is this type of system right for your business?
First and foremost, the complexity of chile business directory getting a static site generator deployed into your workflow can be a dealbreaker. It requires quite a bit of skill just to get the site generator up and running. You need developers and DevOps with the ability to work with a lot of moving pieces in such a way as to make it seamless. To automate the process is even more challenging.