Why I'm betting on static sites in 2026

Every few years the pendulum swings back toward simplicity, and I think we’re in one of those moments again. For a personal blog, a static site generator gives you almost everything a database-backed CMS does, with none of the operational overhead.

Here’s roughly what the build step looks like for a page in this project:

eleventyConfig.addCollection("posts", (collectionApi) => {
  return collectionApi
    .getFilteredByTag("posts")
    .filter((item) => !item.data.draft)
    .sort((a, b) => b.date - a.date);
});

No server to patch, no database to back up, and deploys are a single wrangler pages deploy away. For a blog like this one, that trade-off is an easy call.