Static vs Dynamic: The Decision
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Static vs Dynamic: The Decision
Before you start building, decide where your content lives on the static/dynamic spectrum.
Fully static: Every page is generated at build time. Fast, cheap to host, trivial to cache. Right for most content sites.
Hybrid: Most pages are static, but a few use server-side rendering for dynamic data. Astro supports this with output: 'hybrid' in config. Right for sites with occasional dynamic needs.
Server: Every page is rendered on request. You lose the CDN caching benefits but gain full server-side logic. Right for applications, not content sites.
Start static. You can add dynamism later. The opposite is much harder.
Module 2 gets into the actual scaffold. But before you move on: check that you have Node.js 18 or later installed (node --version), and that you’re comfortable opening a terminal. That’s all you need.