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Static Site Hosting

Delivery of pre-rendered websites and assets via CDN, object storage or edge platforms to minimize runtime servers and operational costs.

Static Site Hosting delivers pre-rendered HTML, CSS and asset bundles from object storage, CDNs or edge platforms, minimizing runtime servers.
Established
Medium

Classification

  • Medium
  • Technical
  • Architectural
  • Intermediate

Technical context

Content delivery networks (CloudFront, Fastly, Akamai)DNS and certificate services (Route53, Cloud DNS, Let's Encrypt)CI/CD systems (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, CircleCI)

Principles & goals

Separate content from delivery infrastructureApply CDN and caching strategies consistentlyAutomate build and deploy pipelines
Build
Team, Domain

Use cases & scenarios

Compromises

  • Misconfigured caches lead to stale content
  • Insufficient protection of the build pipeline compromises content
  • Dependency on third-party CDNs can increase outage risk
  • Minify assets, optimize images and use modern formats
  • Combine cache strategies using Cache-Control and asset versioning
  • Integrate automated tests and security checks in CI

I/O & resources

  • Source repository with static assets
  • Static site generator or build tool
  • Domain, certificates and DNS access
  • Public URL(s) with CDN delivery
  • Versioned artifacts and rollback points
  • Monitoring and logging metrics

Description

Static Site Hosting delivers pre-rendered HTML, CSS and asset bundles from object storage, CDNs or edge platforms, minimizing runtime servers. This approach improves latency, reduces attack surface and operating costs, and simplifies scaling. Common use cases include marketing sites, documentation, blogs and product landing pages with minimal server-side logic.

✔

  • Low operational costs due to eliminated runtime servers
  • Improved performance via CDN distribution
  • Reduced attack surface and simpler hardening

✖

  • Limited support for server-side per-request logic
  • Complexity for dynamic, personalized content
  • Cache invalidation and consistency can be challenging

  • Time to First Byte (TTFB)

    Measures time until first byte; indicator for delivery latency.

  • Cache hit rate

    Percentage of requests served from CDN cache.

  • Monthly operational cost

    Sum of storage, CDN and function invocation costs per month.

Open-source project site on GitHub Pages

Repository uses GitHub Actions to build and automatically publish the site via GitHub Pages.

Product docs on S3 + CloudFront

Documentation is uploaded to S3 via CI and distributed globally via CloudFront.

Marketing landing page on Vercel

Landing page uses an SSG and runs on an edge platform for minimal latency.

1

Choose a static site generator and set up local builds

2

Automate build in CI with artifact upload

3

Configure CDN, TLS and DNS and test cache behavior

⚠️ Technical debt & bottlenecks

  • Monolithic build pipelines with long build times
  • Legacy assets without a versioning scheme
  • Distributed, undocumented cache-bypass workarounds
Cache invalidationBuild timeDNS/SSL configuration
  • Attempting to run highly personalized user dashboards purely statically
  • Serving time-critical API data via static caches
  • Insufficient pipeline security leading to secrets in builds
  • Wrong cache TTLs cause users to see stale content
  • Untested CDN configuration breaks resource delivery
  • Missing monitoring alerts for deployment failures
Basics of HTML, CSS and asset optimizationKnowledge of DNS, TLS and CDN conceptsExperience with CI/CD and build pipelines
Performance (TTFB, CDN hit ratio)Operational cost and total cost of ownershipSecurity by minimizing server-side components
  • • Limited support for server-side authentication
  • • Dependency on third-party CDNs and storage providers
  • • Constraints for content personalization