Static site

A static site is a website made of finished pages. When someone visits, their browser downloads a page and shows it exactly as it was saved. Nothing is working behind the scenes to build that page on the spot.

The other kind of website is called dynamic. A dynamic site has a server behind it: a computer that stays on and builds each page fresh for every visitor. A static site skips all of that because its pages were finished before anyone arrived.

How a static site works

You make your pages once and put them on a host: a service that stores your files and sends them to anyone who asks. From then on every visit is a simple handoff. The visitor's browser asks for a page and the host sends the file back exactly as you saved it. No machine sits in the middle deciding what to show, because there's nothing to decide. The page was already done.

Why static sites are fast, cheap, and hard to break

A finished page can be sent the moment someone asks for it, so static sites load fast. Plain files cost almost nothing to store and send, so they're cheap to run. And because there's no machine behind the page that can crash or get broken into, very little can go wrong. A page that never changes on its own is a page that is very hard to break.

Why people assume you can't take payments on one

Taking a payment sounds like work that has to happen behind the page. Something has to talk to your payment provider (the company that actually moves the money) and confirm that the charge went through. That work usually happens on a backend. A backend is just the software that runs on a server behind your website. A static site has no backend at all, so people commonly assume it can't take payments. That assumption made sense for a long time. It just isn't true anymore.

Where this leaves you if you sell from your own site

You can keep your static site exactly as it is and still take real payments on it. A Coin Moebius buy button is a small piece you add to any page. When a buyer clicks it, the buy button talks to the payment providers you connect yourself, so nothing has to run behind your website. To be clear about what we are: we don't host your website and we don't supply the payment providers. You bring your own, and the money from every sale settles straight into an account you own, because we never hold it or touch it. We charge a flat fee for our part instead of taking a percentage of your sales. If that sounds like the piece your website is missing, start with how the buy button works, then see what it costs, and if you want the fuller picture, read what "no backend" means.