Content Site

Priority patterns

1. Pre-render everything that can be pre-rendered. Blog index, individual posts, docs pages, category pages. Use generateStaticParams for App Router or getStaticPaths for Pages Router. Anything CMS-driven should run on a webhook revalidation, not on every request.
2. ISR with a sensible cadence. Pages that need fresh-ish content but don’t need real-time accuracy go ISR. revalidate: 3600 (hourly) is a good starting point for docs; 60s for blog index pages.
3. next/image for every image asset. Hero images, author photos, post inline images, OG images. Even thumbnail-only sites benefit from format negotiation (WebP/AVIF).
4. next/font for self-hosted fonts. Eliminates FOIT/FOUT, eliminates the third-party request, prevents CLS.
5. Prefetch on hover. next/link does this by default. For other frameworks, consider intersection-observer-based prefetch on the visible link set.

Frequent gotchas

• force-dynamic on the blog index. Almost never necessary. The index can ISR or be fully static.
• Markdown rendering on every request. If you’re parsing MDX at request time, you’re paying function-duration cost on what should be a static asset. Build-time MDX → static HTML.
• Search rebuilt on every request. Site search backed by a function that queries a CMS on every keystroke. Move to a search index (Algolia, Pagefind, build-time generated) and serve from the CDN.
• CMS preview routes leaking into production traffic. A /preview/[slug] route that’s effectively another rendering path; sometimes called from production by mistake. Audit referrers.

Cross-references

• https://nextjs.org/docs/app/api-reference/functions/generate-static-params — for pre-rendering
• https://vercel.com/docs/incremental-static-regeneration — for the ISR fix
• https://nextjs.org/docs/app/api-reference/components/image — image optimization
• https://nextjs.org/docs/app/api-reference/components/font — self-hosted fonts
• vercel-react-best-practices:bundle-defer-third-party — defer analytics/cookie banners