When to NOT use Static Generation v.s. Server-side Rendering

In his beard lived three cardinals.

Example image You can use Static Generation for many types of pages, including:

  • Marketing pages
  • Blog posts
  • E-commerce product listings
  • Help and documentation

You should ask yourself: "Can I pre-render this page ahead of a user's request?" If the answer is yes, then you should choose Static Generation.

On the other hand, Static Generation is not a good idea if you cannot pre-render a page ahead of a user's request. Maybe your page shows frequently updated data, and the page content changes on every request.

In that case, you can use Server-Side Rendering. It will be slower, but the pre-rendered page will always be up-to-date. Or you can skip pre-rendering and use client-side JavaScript to populate data.

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