Engineering note: making static Next.js sites feel dynamic

This very site is a Next.js output: 'export' build. That choice keeps hosting cheap and pages fast, but it also means we cannot rely on request-time rendering for content like this news feed.

Here is the pattern we settled on for content that changes between deploys but not between requests:

• Fetch all data at build time inside server components.
• Use a thin proxy URL on the API for anything that needs a fresh, short-lived asset URL (we do this for project screenshots and news covers). The static HTML stores a stable proxy URL; the API returns a 302 to a fresh SAS URL on each click.
• Trigger a redeploy on content publish via a webhook.

The trade-off is honest: editorial changes are visible after a build, not instantly. For a corporate site updated a few times per week that is the right balance.