If you've spent any time in web development circles in the last few years, you've likely heard about static site generators (SSGs). But what exactly are they, why are they so popular, and how do they fit into the modern JAMstack approach? In this post, we'll break down the what, why, and how of static site generators with practical advice and best practices. What Is a Static Site Generator? A static site generator is a tool that builds HTML pages from input files (like Markdown, JSON, or even plain text) and templates. The generated site is fully static: no database or server-side rendering needed at run-time. Popular generators include: Jekyll (Ruby) — powers GitHub Pages ...