What Happens When You Hit 'Publish' on a Static Site?

If you’re new to the world of static sites, you’ve probably heard how fast, secure, and simple they are. But what does it actually mean to publish a static site? What happens behind the scenes between writing a Markdown file and seeing your content live on the web?

Let’s walk through it step by step. We’ll also show you how tools like hosted.md aim to make this whole process a lot more accessible.

Step 1: You Write in Markdown

Most static site workflows start with content written in Markdown. It’s a lightweight plain-text format that’s perfect for blogs and documentation. It’s readable, easy to version control, and widely supported by editors and tooling.

You might write something like this in a .md file:

---

title: My First Post
date: 2025-06-08
draft: false

---

Welcome to my blog! This is my very first post.

This file includes YAML front matter, which tells your site generator how to treat the content. It includes the title, publish date, and whether it’s a draft.

Step 2: A Static Site Generator Builds the Site

When you hit "publish" (or run a build command), your static site generator — something like Jekyll, Hugo, Astro, or a custom tool — takes over.

Here’s what typically happens during this build step:

• It parses your Markdown files and converts them into HTML.
• It uses layouts or templates to wrap your content in consistent site structure (headers, footers, etc.).
• It builds supporting pages such as the homepage or tag archives.
• It compiles all of this into a folder full of static files, usually called /dist or /public.

This output is now just plain HTML, CSS, and maybe some JavaScript. There’s no backend and no database — just static files, ready to be served.

Step 3: The Files Are Deployed

Once your static site is built, the next step is deployment. This means getting your files onto a web server or CDN where visitors can access them.

You might deploy using:

• GitHub Pages
• Netlify
• Cloudflare Pages
• Vercel
• Your own VPS or S3 bucket

Each of these services listens for changes, pulls in your site files, and hosts them on a public URL. In most cases, this part is automated via Git pushes or CLI commands.

Step 4: Pages Are Cached and Served Instantly

One of the biggest advantages of static sites is speed.

Because everything is prebuilt, your pages don’t need to be generated on the fly. A visitor requests a page, and the server simply returns the ready-to-go HTML. There’s no waiting for database queries or template rendering.

Modern static hosts take this a step further by caching your pages in global CDNs (Content Delivery Networks). This means your site is fast no matter where your visitors are in the world.

Where hosted.md Fits Into This

If you’re technical, this whole pipeline can be empowering. But it also introduces friction.

You need to:

• Understand how to structure your files
• Choose and configure a static site generator
• Set up deployment and builds
• Manage caching and metadata
• Update YAML front matter manually

hosted.md is designed to simplify all of this.

You’ll still get the power and flexibility of Markdown, but we’ll handle:

• The build process behind the scenes
• Clean deployment to fast, reliable hosting
• Draft support via front matter (with a friendly UI)
• Static performance without the setup headaches

You write. We publish.

TL;DR — What Happens When You Hit Publish?

1. Your Markdown files are converted into HTML.
2. A build tool generates the full site.
3. The site is deployed to the web.
4. It’s cached for instant load times.

It’s a clean and efficient system. But it still assumes a certain level of setup and technical knowledge.

With hosted.md, we’re building a way to keep all the benefits of static publishing, while removing the blockers that stop people from actually hitting "publish."