Building a Static Website: What I Wish I Knew Before Starting
Static sites are fast and simple—until they aren’t. Here’s what I’d do differently: tooling, content, hosting, and the small decisions that add up.
TL;DR
Choose your static site generator and URL scheme early. Plan for build times and asset pipelines to scale. Set up CI/CD and analytics from the start so you’re not retrofitting later. And keep content in a format you can migrate—Markdown and a clear folder structure pay off.
LogNroll Team
Product & Engineering
Why Go Static?
Static sites give you speed, security, and cheap hosting. No database or server runtime means fewer moving parts and better performance. The trade-off is that every change usually requires a rebuild and deploy—so getting the foundation right early saves a lot of pain.
What I Wish I’d Nailed Sooner
Pick the right generator early
Switching from one SSG to another mid-project means rewriting templates, fixing build scripts, and sometimes moving content. Choose based on your content model (Markdown, MDX, CMS), team comfort, and deploy target—and stick with it unless you have a strong reason to migrate.
URLs and redirects matter from day one
Decide your URL structure (trailing slashes, lowercase, segment depth) before you publish. Changing it later means redirects, broken backlinks, and SEO churn. Keep a redirect map if you ever rename or move pages.
Build times will grow
A 10-page site builds in seconds. Add hundreds of pages, image processing, and heavy data and build time can hit minutes or more. Plan for incremental builds or partial deploys if you expect the site to scale.
Content and CMS
If you’re authoring in Markdown or MDX, keep front matter consistent and avoid one-off formats. If you later plug in a headless CMS, you’ll want a clear mapping from content types to URLs and templates. Think about who will edit content and how often—that should drive whether you need a CMS at all or just a solid Git workflow.
Hosting and CI/CD
Most static hosts (Vercel, Netlify, Cloudflare Pages, GitHub Pages) give you a Git-based deploy: push and they build and publish. Set up branch previews and a clear production branch from the start. Add a simple health or “last built” check so you notice broken builds quickly. If you use a monorepo or private dependencies, double-check that the build environment has access to everything it needs.
Analytics and Scripts
Even a static marketing site benefits from analytics and maybe session replay or error tracking. Integrate your script early so you’re not guessing which pages or flows matter. Keep scripts in a single place (e.g. layout or a shared component) and respect privacy and consent from day one.
Bottom line
A static site is a great choice for speed and simplicity, but the “simple” part depends on making a few key decisions early: generator, URLs, build pipeline, and how you’ll handle content and analytics. Get those right and the rest is mostly iteration.