5 ms·

Really? People are hunkering down in their homes and have lots of time on their hands. If a web site is overloaded, they can try again later. Annoying, sure.

Really? People are hunkering down in their homes and have lots of time on their hands. If a web site is overloaded, they can try again later. Annoying, sure. Life or death? I am skeptical. Moreover, “getting static” is nice and a fine way to improve performance, but it seems to me that really the goal should be, “be available.” What’s wrong with using a CMS or anything else as long as you have the capacity to meet demand?

divan 7y ago
I feel like few people even know about static site generators, and use general purpose solutions what anything that includes word "site" in it, whether it's dynamic social portal or single page static content. Like, from the practical perspective, if you have a blog with content that is requested 1000 times per minute, but updates once per month (23 microtimes per minute), why on earth would you setup a database (with geo-redundant replica, of course) and run overly complex code to render the same HTML over and over every single time it's requested? The only possible answer here is being oblivious of other available options, and I believe author of the post is trying to raise awareness that there is another option.
- ricardobeat 7y ago
  Most websites are more dynamic than they look. Anything with frequent updates (news for example), user accounts, any kind of personalization / geo-based content, or running A/B testing will demand dynamic rendering. That's not an excuse for terrible performance either way. At this point it's trivial to handle hundreds (or thousands) of req/s on common hardware if you just choose the right software to run.
  - tacon 7y ago
    The JAMstack pitch is to sprinkle a bit of JavaScript on a mainly static site to achieve personalization, geo-based content, etc. A recent intro video shows exactly how to do that with news displayed based on browser language settings, etc.[0] It is a bit more complicated than a plain static site, but with recent tooling, not much more complicated. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_l0qrPUJds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_l0qrPUJds
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - PKop 7y ago
    even then it's only a question of how long can "stale" data be served, or is the dynamic-ness worth it? You can you lamba/cloud functions as webhooks for your CMS to ping when a rebuild of the static site is necessary. Netlify helps you set this up easily. Even if you updated a dozen times a day, it would take only a few minutes or less to rebuild and deploy. edit: yes per-user data is a primary use case for dynamically rendered sites. But public pages that all users load make sense as static if possible
    - ricardobeat 7y ago
      Not dozens, think millions/billions of combinations for dynamic content. You cannot pre-render all the possibilities.
- krebs_liebhaber 7y ago
  > why on earth would you ... render the same HTML over and over every single time it's requested? That's what caching is for.
golergka 7y ago
> If a web site is overloaded, they can try again later. That's not how a real audience works. If a web site overloaded, user will immediately skip to the next google result.
- AgentOrange1234 7y ago
  If that’s the alternative, is this life or death?
  - dwheeler 7y ago
    Yes, because that next alternative could be a scam site. When people are desperate for information, they will get it wherever they could find it, even if it is garbage. It is much better to have the good sites stay up.
gukov 7y ago
A government website, or anything of importance during an emergency, really has no excuse when it comes to being excessively heavy, both on the front end and the back end. At times of panic you want to convey information as fast as possible and as efficiently as possible. Five nines availability.
- AgentOrange1234 7y ago
  I agree completely with the goal of availability. I don’t even disagree that static pages could be useful toward this. What I take exception to is the idea that static pages are the one true way to achieve this goal, and TFA’s pronouncing that not using static pages is irresponsible.
  - zlynx 7y ago
    The only other practical idea I've ever heard of is serving a dynamic page to a CDN. Which means it was made into a static page. On the CDN. Wooo, progress!

divan 7y ago

I feel like few people even know about static site generators, and use general purpose solutions what anything that includes word "site" in it, whether it's dynamic social portal or single page static content. Like, from the practical perspective, if you have a blog with content that is requested 1000 times per minute, but updates once per month (23 microtimes per minute), why on earth would you setup a database (with geo-redundant replica, of course) and run overly complex code to render the same HTML over and over every single time it's requested? The only possible answer here is being oblivious of other available options, and I believe author of the post is trying to raise awareness that there is another option.

ricardobeat 7y ago
Most websites are more dynamic than they look. Anything with frequent updates (news for example), user accounts, any kind of personalization / geo-based content, or running A/B testing will demand dynamic rendering. That's not an excuse for terrible performance either way. At this point it's trivial to handle hundreds (or thousands) of req/s on common hardware if you just choose the right software to run.
- tacon 7y ago
  The JAMstack pitch is to sprinkle a bit of JavaScript on a mainly static site to achieve personalization, geo-based content, etc. A recent intro video shows exactly how to do that with news displayed based on browser language settings, etc.[0] It is a bit more complicated than a plain static site, but with recent tooling, not much more complicated. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_l0qrPUJds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_l0qrPUJds
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- PKop 7y ago
  even then it's only a question of how long can "stale" data be served, or is the dynamic-ness worth it? You can you lamba/cloud functions as webhooks for your CMS to ping when a rebuild of the static site is necessary. Netlify helps you set this up easily. Even if you updated a dozen times a day, it would take only a few minutes or less to rebuild and deploy. edit: yes per-user data is a primary use case for dynamically rendered sites. But public pages that all users load make sense as static if possible
  - ricardobeat 7y ago
    Not dozens, think millions/billions of combinations for dynamic content. You cannot pre-render all the possibilities.
krebs_liebhaber 7y ago
> why on earth would you ... render the same HTML over and over every single time it's requested? That's what caching is for.

golergka 7y ago

> If a web site is overloaded, they can try again later. That's not how a real audience works. If a web site overloaded, user will immediately skip to the next google result.

AgentOrange1234 7y ago
If that’s the alternative, is this life or death?
- dwheeler 7y ago
  Yes, because that next alternative could be a scam site. When people are desperate for information, they will get it wherever they could find it, even if it is garbage. It is much better to have the good sites stay up.

gukov 7y ago

A government website, or anything of importance during an emergency, really has no excuse when it comes to being excessively heavy, both on the front end and the back end. At times of panic you want to convey information as fast as possible and as efficiently as possible. Five nines availability.

AgentOrange1234 7y ago
I agree completely with the goal of availability. I don’t even disagree that static pages could be useful toward this. What I take exception to is the idea that static pages are the one true way to achieve this goal, and TFA’s pronouncing that not using static pages is irresponsible.
- zlynx 7y ago
  The only other practical idea I've ever heard of is serving a dynamic page to a CDN. Which means it was made into a static page. On the CDN. Wooo, progress!