Static Site Generator

A tool that generates a full static HTML website based on raw data and a set of templates.

A static site generator (SSG) is a tool that produces a complete website of static HTML files from source content (typically Markdown or a similar markup language) and templates. Unlike dynamic web applications that generate pages on each request, static sites are pre-built at compile time and served as plain HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files.

Popular static site generators include Hugo, Jekyll, Gatsby, Eleventy, and Astro. Static sites are fast (no server-side processing per request), secure (no database or server-side code to exploit), and inexpensive to host (served from CDNs or object storage). They are well-suited for documentation sites, blogs, marketing pages, and landing pages.

Static sites often consume APIs at build time (fetching data from a headless CMS or database to generate pages) or at runtime on the client side (loading dynamic content via JavaScript API calls). API gateways can serve as the data source for static sites, providing authenticated access to content APIs during the build process. Static sites can be hosted on edge networks alongside serverless API gateways, providing a complete application stack with minimal infrastructure.