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A static site generator or SSG is software that developers can use (typically requiring command line access) to setup a personal site that uses a set of text content files typically stored on a server, and transforms them into a set of static HTML files for a website.

A static site generator can be contrasted with a dynamic website which generates content. Typically, in a dynamic website, there are requests to a server which prepares the HTML to be sent to the user. A static site generator produces the final output HTML pages before-hand thus saving this "dynamic" generation feature from being necessary. This has advantages and disadvantages.

Why

There are many advantages to using a static site generator for your personal site:

Long term maintenance advantages
Archival ready HTML output
Can be hosted on any webserver
Easy "Drop" or "Folder upload" deployment solutions available rather than git or automation being as needed
Free or cheap static hosting options are available
No "moving parts"; nothing to break
Easy to get started
Source files can be edited on an operating system. Usually its just text files!
Generators are typically fairly simple programs to write and modify.
Lots of existing options; Few are better than most
No database-antipattern
Fewer security vulnerabilities with static HTML+CSS

Why not

There are also many disadvantages to using a static site generator for your personal site:

Most SSGs are written as CLI programs and are difficult for anyone who is not a developer or does not have the time to learn yet another series of magic text commands
Can be difficult to install due to the use of programming language package managers
Most SSGs don't scale well with large data sets
Supporting dynamic interactivity usually requires JavaScript and APIs
Changes can only be shown as quickly as the build runs
SSGs are not always a "simple" option: https://kevq.uk/static-site-generators-are-easy-to-useright/

How to

For an introductory guide, see Static Site Generators for Beginners by Brennan Brown.

For details on implementations and examples of IndieWeb building blocks e.g.

How to send & receive Webmentions with static site generators

See:

static site

IndieWeb Examples

Morgan - is still running Hugo in 26
rascul is writing his own site generator for https://rascul.io.
bear is writing and using Hakkan.
Emma Kuo is writing and using Skein.
Daniel Goldsmith is using Hugo and writing nanopub, a micropub-endpoint for SSGs
AJ Jordan is writing Stratic and lazymention (Webmention for static sites)
Amit Gawande is using Hugo and posting with micro.blog via a micropub-endpoint
capjamesg uses Aurora to generate his website.
Ethan Yoo is using Hugo for ethanyoo.com and mdBook for his personal wiki
ttntm is using Eleventy to build his site since switching from Hugo in 04/2021
adi is writing and using mkws, a simple static site generator using sh as templating language.
Anthony Ciccarello is using Eleventy to build his site after switching from Jekyll for ciccarello.me
Pablo Morales is using Datenstrom Yellow a flat-file CMS (static site generator) for his website.
jo uses a personalized version of the bashblog script for their blog
Kelson Vibber is using Eleventy to build most of the more recent parts of his main website.
ZodiacalComet is writing and using their own generator to build their site.
Naty S is using Hugo for her main site (with micropub support via Indiekit), and Quartz for her secondary site that will be in the form of a digital garden.
Alfred Nerstu is using SvelteKit with prerendering to build alfrednerstu.com, with webmentions sent via a GitHub Action on each deploy.
Abhinav Sarkar is using a bespoke SSG for abhinavsarkar.net built upon the Shake build system.
Add yourself here… (see this for more details)

Graphical Editing User Interfaces

Setting up a CMS or micropub service can help make it easier to post without editing files directly. These usually require some kind of continuous integration to allow automatically building and deploying the site whenever these UIs change the underlying files.

Headless CMSs

Several headless CMSs offer a workflow where you can edit content through a UI and have changes committed directly to the git repository.

Page editing User Interfaces

Some services add the ability to edit pages graphically in a "What You See Is What You Get" style visual editor. This can be more accessible to users without coding experience.