WordPress Simply Static is a static site generator that converts your existing WordPress website into a static website that you can host on your server, a static hosting provider, or a CDN. It drastically improves your website’s performance (speed / performance)andminimizes security risks (security) by eliminating the connection between your traditional server and your static website.
Create a static site from WordPress for more security & speed with lower hosting costs!
Simply Static can also be used by local development tools like LocalWP or Lando to develop your website offline and deploy the static website online.
This reduces your hosting costs to almost zero (depending on your requirements and the service/provider used).
The WordPress plugin massively improves performance and security. Thus, it definitely belongs to the best performance plugins and is still quite unknown.
What does the WordPress plugin Simply Static do for static website generation?
Simply Static generates static (HTML) copies of your WordPress pages. It works a bit like a web crawler, starting on your website’s homepage and looking for links to other pages to create static copies of them. It also includes all images, CSS and JS files, and any other files that can be linked to.
As Simply Static creates the static pages, it automatically replaces the URLs for the WordPress installation with either (a) absolute URLs on a domain of your choice, or (b) relative URLs, so you can host the static files on any domain, or (c) URLs created for offline use, so you can browse the site locally on your computer.
Introduction video:
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Who should use Simply Static and take advantage of its many benefits?
Pretty much everyone, except e-commerce or membership sites (more to come in updates!). These require a high degree of interaction and user accounts, which are not available on a static website.
Example of load time optimization after activating simply static:
Features and Properties of Simply Static
PERFORMANCE
Converting your website to a static website can drastically improve its performance. Simply Static eliminates all requests to your database, thereby reducing the time to first byte.
This is particularly effective for websites that use long pages with many animations, graphics, and other resource-intensive tools like sliders.
SECURITY
Removing the connection to your database and your traditional server reduces the risk of being hacked.
This reduces the stress of keeping your WordPress website up to date and keeps your data secure (locally or in a protected environment).
REDUCE HOSTING COSTS
Using Simply Static to deploy your website with one of the static hosting providers, a CDN, or an S3 bucket reduces the amount of money required for reliable web hosting.
With the right setup, you can even host your website completely free of charge (e.g., Cloudflare Pages and GitHub Pages).
LOCAL DEVELOPMENT
Develop your site locally and only push the statically exported website to a server. To ensure that everything works as expected, I have created a list of development tools that are fully supported:
We strongly recommend not using any other tool for local development if you are not a programmer, as manual package installation is required in most cases.
The Pro version of Simply Static extends the plugin with various features.
GITHUB INTEGRATION
With GitHub integration, you can fully automate your entire development process.
All you need is a GitHub account; no knowledge of Git or GitHub itself is required, as Simply Static Pro handles the entire process for you and keeps your repository up to date.
This allows you to deploy your static website to:
- GitHub Pages
- Cloudflare Pages
- Netlify
- Vercel
- Amazon S3
- Digital Ocean Spaces
- BunnyCDN (and other CDN providers)
- SFTP to your server
BUILDS AND INDIVIDUAL EXPORTS
Create builds to export only a subset of pages/posts. You can assign a build to any custom post type in your WordPress admin area and export it.
Never sit back and watch a full static export run, instead run a full export once and then use builds to export changes as quickly as possible.
You can also export individual pages/posts after making changes.
FORMS
Simply Static Pro supports Contact Form 7 and Gravity Forms for use on your static website.
You can decide whether you want to use an external service like Zapier and IFTTT, or if your original WordPress website should handle the submission and send you an email with all the details.
Learn more about it here
SEARCH
Use a fully static search solution that does not rely on third parties. It uses Fuse.js and creates an index of your entire website as a JSON file.
The search supports autosuggestion and fuzzy logic and is much more convenient than your standard WordPress search by default.
COMMENTS
Enable comments on your static website without the need for third-party providers. Use your original WordPress website to process the comments.
Convinced?
Test Simply Static for your website now:
Are there any limitations?
You cannot use plugins that require a login, as there is no account system on a static website. This applies to e-commerce (like WooCommerce) or membership sites.
Furthermore, a website that relies heavily on Ajax to update content in real-time is not the best project for Simply Static, as a significant amount of custom development would be required.
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