Why create a static site?

Learn why a static site can be a better choice.

A static website consists only of static files like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, images, etc. It does not use server-side processing, databases, routers, or rendering. Everything is pre-built, and your hosting delivers the website files to the browsers exactly as they appear on the server.

In contrast, in a dynamic website, every page is generated dynamically by the server after any request. This allows to display of different content for each visit (i.e. users who are logged in might see a different version of the page). Dynamic websites need some software installed in the server to work, like a scripting language (e.g. PHP, JavaScript, Python, or Ruby), a database, etc.

Why create static sites?

Lume is a static site generator, which means it can only generate static websites. We believe that most websites existing today could be perfectly static sites and this would make them better. Why static sites are a better choice in most cases?

It's cheaper

Unless you have a big site with millions of visits, hosting a static site is very cheap or even free. There are many hosting services with generous free tiers for static sites like Netlify, Vercel, Cloudflare, Kinsta, etc. See deployment for an extensive list of options. And if you decide to self-host your site, there are cheap options for less than $5/month in Digital Ocean, Hetzner, etc.

Portability

Deploying a static site can't be easier. Due they are only static files, you only have to upload these files to the server, using git, rsync, ftp, or your favorite tool. It's even possible to compress a static site into a zip file and send it by email or messaging!

Security

Because there's no logic in the server, static sites are much more secure than dynamic sites. There are no endpoints to exploit, like configuration files, PHP scripts, or XSS vulnerabilities.

Performance

Static sites tend to be more performant than dynamic sites, at least as far as the backend is concerned. The reason is the server only has to deliver the files as they are, without any additional process, which is really fast. And if you're using a CDN with replicated content in different parts of the world, and with proper cache header, your site will be lightning fast.

Almost no maintenance

A static site can live forever without any kind of maintenance (there's no database to restart, plugins to update, etc). You can upload a static site and forget about it for years. As long as browsers continue to exist and support HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, your static website will continue working like the first day (or even better because browsers are improving over time).

Own your content

In most static site generators, like Lume, the content is not stored in a remote database guarded by a private company, but in files inside your repo, with formats like Markdown, YAML, or JSON that you can open with any text editor. This makes your content completely accessible to you, and you can do whatever you want with it, like modify, export, move, reuse, etc.

Better for Web sustainability

If you care about the environment (you should), static sites are the preferred format for the web due to their lower emissions. According to the Web Sustainability Guidelines:

If choosing a code generation tool, use a Static Site Generator in preference to a bulky content management system. Because SSGs often start using a minimalist content entry format (like markdown) and all of the compilation is done before the website is uploaded, the emissions benefit comes from the server not having to place as much effort into serving pages (as they are static) for each visitor.

No vendor lock-in

Most static site generators have a similar flow: you store your content in a format like markdown and they convert the content into web pages. This makes it easy to switch from a static site generator to another.

Lume can be your current site generator, but maybe you want to switch to other option in the future like Astro, Jekyll, Hugo, Eleventy or any other. Or vice versa, you may use one of these site generators and want to switch to Lume. The effort needed to change from one static site generator to another is much lower than the effort required to change a dynamic site generator (i.e. from WordPress to Drupal).

What if some dynamism is needed?

There are some dynamic features that you may want in your website. Does it mean that you must switch to a dynamic site? Depending on the feature, some alternatives can be implemented in static sites:

Searching is a basic feature of any website. Fortunately, it's possible to have a good search engine on your static site. There are some options:

  • Pagefind is a fast search library for static sites. And Lume has a plugin to use it.

  • For advanced use cases, you can use a third-party service like Algolia or Orama.

  • A very basic implementation is using a search engine like DuckDuckGo to show results limited to a specific domain. The hidden input named sites allows us to restrict the DuckDuckGo query to a specific domain.

    <form role="search" action="https://duckduckgo.com" method="GET">
  <label>Search in lume.land <input type="search" name="q"></label>
  <input type="hidden" name="sites" value="lume.land">
  <button>Search</button>
</form>

    Try it now:

Comments

There are different options to manage comments in static sites:

  • Use the Fediverse. mastodon-comments is a clever way to show comments on your posts without implementing a comment system but using Mastodon and other similar platforms compatible with the Fediverse.
  • Use GitHub discussions: If you have a technical blog and most of your users have an account on GitHub, you can use a solution like giscus that uses GitHub discussions as a comment system.
  • Use 3rd party services like Discus.

Forms

There are hundreds of solutions to include forms on your website. From free and simple tools like Google Forms or Static Forms to more advanced tools like Typeform.

CMS

One of the main issues of static sites was they are not easy to update by non-technical people. Fortunately, this is not true anymore. There are plenty of CMS for static sites, some recommendations:

  • LumeCMS can be a good solution, especially if your site is built with Lume (although it can work with any static site).
  • DecapCMS is an open-source CMS that can be used with any static site generator. Lume has a plugin to use it easier.
  • CloudCannon is a CMS as a service for static sites. It's ideal if you need advanced features for publishers. It supports Lume, among many other static site generators.
  • See more CMS in this list.
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