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Static, dynamic, and ISR in plain words

lesson 7-1 · ~11 min · 22/29

Quiz

Warm-up from 'After the write: revalidate and pending states': what does revalidatePath("/blog") actually do?

When is a page rendered?

Everything in Units 4 and 5 boils down to one question per page: when does the server run your components? Three answers exist:

  1. Static. Rendered once at build time (next build). Every visitor gets the same prebuilt HTML instantly. Think: marketing pages, docs, blog posts via generateStaticParams.
  2. Dynamic. Rendered on every request. Always fresh, always personal, but the visitor waits for the render. Think: dashboards, carts, anything reading cookies.
  3. ISR (Incremental Static Regeneration). The hybrid: served static, but re-rendered in the background after a time window (revalidate: 60). Visitors always get instant HTML that is at most a little stale.
StaticDynamicISRbuildrender on every requestre-render after revalidate window▪ gold = server renders · dots = visitors served saved HTML
Static renders once at build. Dynamic renders on every request. ISR renders at build, then refreshes in the background when the revalidate window passes.

Quiz

A news homepage must load instantly for millions of readers but should show new headlines within about a minute. Which strategy fits best?

Problem

Classify this page: a shopping-cart page that reads the user's session cookie to show their items. Static, dynamic, or ISR? (one word)