Static Site Generation (SSG)
Pre-rendering pages to static HTML at build time. The fastest possible page loads because there's no server-side computation on each request.
What is Static Site Generation (SSG)?
Pre-rendering pages to static HTML at build time. The fastest possible page loads because there's no server-side computation on each request.
Static Site Generation (SSG) is a intermediate-level concept that sits in the Web & Content Delivery area of system design. Engineers reach for it whenever they need to reason about real-world trade-offs in that space — not just for textbook correctness, but because real production systems at companies like Netflix, Amazon, and Google make these decisions every day.
If you want to go deeper than this definition — with diagrams, code, and a quiz to lock it in — work through the "Static Site Generation" lesson linked below. It walks through the why, the mechanism, the trade-offs, and how the giants actually use it in production.
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Full interactive lesson with diagrams, code examples, real-world references, and a quiz.
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Lessons that touch on Static Site Generation (SSG) as part of a larger topic.
See also
Related glossary terms you might want to look up next.
ISR
Incremental Static Regeneration: a Next.js feature that re-generates static pages in the background after a specified time interval, combining SSG speed with fresh data.
SSR
Server-Side Rendering: generating HTML on the server for each request. Slower than SSG but always returns fresh data. Good for personalized or frequently changing pages.
CDN
A network of servers distributed globally that caches content close to users. Netflix uses CDNs to stream video from servers near you, not from one central location.