What Is A Static Site and How Can It Help Your Business?

Static site generators enable you to create a static, HTML-based website without databases or external data sources, avoiding server-side processing when accessing your website.

Static websites are becoming increasingly popular because they’re faster and more flexible than dynamic websites. 

Also, static website generators are often easier to deploy and host, as your hosting provider doesn’t need to cover special requirements.

The Static Site Generator

While dynamic sites are used more often than their static counterparts, the alternative of using a headless CMS to generate and handle static sites has gained popularity, especially because many of the constraints that made it challenging to develop a static site don’t exist anymore.

That’s where the static site generator comes in. A static website generator can help you create fast, visually appealing websites without suffering the restraints that plagued marketers and developers in the past. 

Here are some of the reasons why you need to consider static site generators in 2020.

Why Use A Static Site Generator?

Fast load times

Unlike their dynamic counterparts, static sites don’t have to pull information from a database on every page because they serve pre-compiled files that cut load times significantly, something your SEO team will love for their white-label SEO dashboard improvement.

Security 

Dynamic sites are often less secure than static sites. That means that if you’re developing a site, you might benefit from a static site with a smaller server-side infrastructure, closing any potential gap that would result in a security breach.  

Flexibility

Dynamic sites are often limited in how customizable your themes are, and that’s great if you want something simple. Static sites offer you more freedom if you want something that’s more specific than most sites.

JAMstack Ready

Many brands are looking to leverage a Jamstack approach to content management and delivery for faster, more easily modifiable, and more easily scalable digital experiences. A JavaScript-based static site generator slots into a JAMstack quite nicely. 

11 Static Site Generators to watch in 2022

Here are some of the websites we think you should watch this year, as they represent the best, most flexible options currently available.

Enjoy.

1 | Gatsby

One of the things marketers like the most about Gatsby is that it’s optimized for speed. It loads the parts of the website you need at that moment and prefetches resources for other pages quickly. 

That makes Gatsby a solid choice if you want to access data quickly and consistently. 

Another point for Gatsby is that you can use it to pull data from different sources, such as CMS, which enables you to customize your static website further. Similarly, Gatsby comes with a plugin that allows you to manipulate images and customize your robots .txt site. 

2 |  Hugo

Hugo is one of the most popular open-source static site generators. It has thousands of ratings on GitHub and a strong community backing it.

Hugo is based on the Go programming language, which makes it super quick in comparison with other static site generators. Another thing that makes Hugo stand out is the number of themes it has on its library, with more than a hundred themes to choose from.

3 | Nuxt JS

One of the best things about NUXT.JS is that it’s an open-source, progressive VUE.js framework, which makes it easier to tweak in case you have specific requirements in mind and want to fine-tune your website.

The reason behind NUXT.js’s customizability is that it has a modular architecture that enables marketers to choose from more than 50 modules to make your development faster.

4 | Jekyll

While it can be said that Jekyll has lagged behind some of the site generators on this list, it’s still one of the most popular and hosts a large user base and a solid directory of plugins. 

One of Jekyll’s main selling points is that it enables marketers to import and migrate an existing site to Jekyll easily, so for instance, if your site is on WordPress, switching to Jekyll is simple, enabling you to focus on the content without having to worry about the rest while preserving your links and layouts.  

5 | Eleventy

Sometimes you want to get some dynamic content into some static HTML files.

If you have a static, hardcoded website that's already built, you don't need to completely rebuild it in order to get dynamic content into it from a Headless CMS.

Eleventy is a great tool to do this work - even if you only need to work on one file at a time.

Recommended reading: Using Agility CMS and Eleventy for simple JAMStack tasks

6 | Create React App

Creating React Apps is the easiest way to get started with React JS. Its popularity, simplicity, and ease of use make it an ideal candidate for building modern web apps.

Since Create is tightly connected to React, it offers a great deal of support for all the related React libraries and tools.

It also simplifies the web development experience, enabling marketers to build websites quickly due to its simplicity. Also, the fact that the site generator is documented in GitHub-based documents makes it really appealing.

Recommended reading: Using Agility CMS with Create React App

7 | Hexo

Hexo is a fast, simple blog framework that’s powered by Node.js. One of the features that make Hexo a popular choice is that it’s easy to implement if you’re already using JavaScript and are familiar with the language. 

This site generator is often used for general purposes and supports using templates from different engines, making it a flexible choice for JS developers. 

8| Next

Next is another React Framework tool that allows you to do Static Site Generation but also has the Zeit / Now hosting framework. A very recent update allows you optionally use Server Rendering for some routes in your site if necessary and includes the ability to quickly Preview, something that only Gatsby was offering before.

Looks like we’ve got an actual feature race going on here with the top 2 Static Site Generators!

Agility CMS has a great starter all set for you in GitHub that demonstrates a lot of what Next has to offer.

9 | Nift

Nift is a cross-platform open source framework for managing and generating websites created by Nick Ham from Australia.

It's lightning fast (evidence), developed from the ground up in C++, and released for free under the MIT license. You can use it for any of your personal or commercial projects – be sure to preserve copyright and license notices!

10 | Brunch

Brunch is a fast, programming language-agnostic HTML5 assembler and build pipeline. Brunch compiles scripts, templates, and style sheets, wrapping them in common.js and AMD modules, giving you a lean result.

Brunch enables you to create a website skeleton to get users up and running quickly. However, it’s better suited for users who want to create an app or a blog/app static website. 

Brunch is an ultra-fast HTML5 assembler and build pipeline. Brunch compiles scripts, templates and style sheets, links them, wraps them in Common.js or AMD modules, and concatenates the result.

11 | Octopress

Octopress has a clean, responsive theme written in semantic HTML5, which makes it great if you’re conscious about readability and mobile-friendliness. Also, Brunch is easy to use and makes development easier.

Octopress integrates seamlessly with third-party software and ships with a handful of strong plugins, both from the Octopress and the Jekyll community, which means that you can do SEO, add GitHub repositories, and hook analytics with ease. 

Bonus Entry | 12 | Bridgetown

Bridgetown is the new player; it literally just launched in April 2020! It modernizes Jekyll in a number of ways…most apparent is it comes with support for Webpack out-of-the-box, which means you can easily add Javascript frameworks like React, Vue, Stimulus as well as CSS frameworks like Bulma or Tailwind. It improves a lot of the default configuration settings. Plus, it also directly supports pagination and prototype pages (aka you can auto-generate archives for categories, tags, and other search terms) - previously in Jekyll, that required setting up third-party plugins.

Static Sites = JAMstack-ready

What’s really interesting is that JAMStack developers are using Static Site Generators build on top of JavaScript frameworks. 

If JAMstack is on your mind (and it should be!), it’s worth understanding how a static site generator can work with an API-first, headless CMS. Here’s why and how you can migrate to JAMstack.