(SSG - static site generator)

I mean, it is arguably much easier to just write the HTML page and upload it with FTP and everyone can see it. I never understood why github became a popular place to host your site in the first place.

> I never understood why github became a popular place to host your site in the first place.

Easy: it was free, it was accessible to people that couldn't spend money for a hosting provider (read: high schoolers) and didn't impose arbitrary restrictions on what you were hosting.

Back then, your options as a high school student were basically to either try and reskin a closed off platform as much as you could (Tumblr could do that, but GitHub Pages also released in the time period where platforms were cracking down on all user customization larger than "what is my avatar") or to accept that the site you wanted to publish your stuff on could disappear at any moment the sketchy hosting provider that provided you a small amount of storage determined your bandwidth costs meant upselling you on the premium plan.

GitHub didn't impose those restrictions in exchange for being a bit less interactive when it came to publishing things (so no such thing as a comment section without using Disqus or something like that, and chances are you didn't need the comments anyways so win-win) That's why it got a lot more popular than just using an FTP server.

Because it doesn't require you to run an HTTP server, FTP server, or install an FTP client.