GameZiko drops its CMS for static generation to serve 56,000 browser game pages
The free HTML5 game portal GameZiko rebuilt its 56,000-plus game pages after its WordPress setup struggled under database load and viral traffic spikes. The team moved game metadata into flat files and pre-renders each page to static HTML at build time, served from a CDN edge. Time to first byte reportedly fell from about 600ms to under 100ms. Thumbnails are now generated on demand and cached at the edge, cutting storage substantially, and a lightweight client-side search index handles lookups. The author acknowledges tradeoffs, including slower publishing and git-based workflows that are less accessible to non-technical contributors.


