Wat is Static Site Generation (SSG)?
Snelle definitie
Static Site Generation is een methode waarbij alle pagina's tijdens het bouwproces worden voorgerenderd als statische HTML-bestanden, wat resulteert in extreem snelle laadtijden.
Static Site Generation (SSG) creates all of a website's pages during a build step, before any user visits the site. The result is a collection of plain HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files that can be served directly by a CDN without any server-side processing per request.
Unlike dynamic websites that generate pages on every request (SSR) or in the browser (CSR), static sites are pre-built. When a user visits a page, they receive a pre-made HTML file instantly. This eliminates server processing time and database queries, resulting in the fastest possible load times.
Popular static site generators include Next.js (which supports both SSG and SSR), Gatsby, Hugo, Eleventy, and Astro. These tools take your content (from markdown files, a CMS, or an API) and templates, then generate a complete website during the build process.
SSG is ideal for websites where content doesn't change with every request: blogs, documentation sites, marketing websites, landing pages, and portfolio sites. For content that changes frequently, many SSG frameworks support Incremental Static Regeneration (ISR), which rebuilds only the pages that need updating.
Waarom het belangrijk is
Static sites are the fastest, most secure, and cheapest to host. Since there's no server processing or database, there's nothing to hack and nothing to slow down. They can be hosted on a CDN for pennies per month and handle millions of visitors without performance degradation.
For businesses, this translates to better user experience, higher conversion rates, reduced hosting costs, and fewer security concerns. If your website's content doesn't need to be dynamically generated per request, SSG is often the smartest choice.
Praktijkvoorbeelden
A documentation site with 5,000 pages built with SSG loads every page in under 200ms because there's zero server processing, just serving pre-built HTML from a CDN
A marketing agency switched their client websites from WordPress to a static site generator, reducing hosting costs by 90% while improving page speed scores to near-perfect
A blog with 1,000+ articles uses SSG with incremental rebuilds, adding new content in seconds without regenerating the entire site
A landing page built with SSG achieved a 99/100 Lighthouse performance score out of the box, compared to 62/100 for the previous dynamically-generated version
Gerelateerde termen
Server-Side Rendering (SSR)
Server-Side Rendering is een techniek waarbij webpagina's op de server worden gegenereerd bij elk verzoek, zodat volledige HTML naar de browser wordt geleverd voor snelle eerste laadtijden.
CDN (Content Delivery Network)
Een CDN is een netwerk van geografisch verspreide servers die webinhoud aan gebruikers levert vanaf de server die het dichtst bij hen staat, waardoor laadtijden worden verkort.
Single-Page Application (SPA)
Een Single-Page Application is een webapplicatie die één HTML-pagina laadt en de inhoud dynamisch bijwerkt terwijl de gebruiker ermee interacteert.
CMS (Content Management System)
Een CMS is software waarmee gebruikers inhoud op een website kunnen aanmaken, beheren en aanpassen zonder code te schrijven, via een intuïtieve publicatie-interface.
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