Jeroen BaertIf you're lazy (like me) and still running a few (mostly static) WordPress sites, I can recommend Simply Static. Export the whole site/blog as static pages, and take away the security / maintenance hassle of running WP and PHP.
Of course, less of a fit for sites that depend on a lot of dynamic content and forms and whatnot.
But it did wonders for my blog, which sees increased traffic for the Mastodon-related posts and guides. Should load faster now :) https://www.forceflow.be/2022/11/11/moving-from-twitter-to-mastodon/
A guide to Mastodon (for Twitter users) - Jeroen Baert's Blog
Last Update: 22/07/2023 (Links cleanup) General resources Huh? What is a server? Why should I care? This is where the first major difference between Mastodon and Twitter becomes clear: Update: Since May 2023, Mastodon uses mastodon.social as the default instance using the sign-up process on mobile. This should make it …
You can still run the original site on a secret, password protected subdomain, for easy updating / changing themes etc. Huge reduction of attack surface.
Dan York@jbaert I agree this approach makes so much sense. I have it on my long list of personal “IT tasks” to do this for several of my WP sites that I update very infrequently.
Thibaultmol 🌈@jbaert learned last month about "partial hydration". Basically, doing everything statically and only load js for the couple sections that need it (if that section of the page is even accessed at all)
Karl Auerbach@jbaert - I started using GRAV a few years back because I wanted something highly static that could be backed up and moved as a simple directory hierarchy of flat files without messing with databases, schemas, PHP.
One of the nice side effects is that such websites serve-up really fast and efficiently. They usually feel quite responsive to users.
@jbaert A question for you - *where* are you hosting your static files?
I've deployed some static sites before to Netlify, and also to a simple S3 bucket. I've recently been learning more about Cloudflare Pages. (There are, of course, so many options.)
I have also used Shifter before - https://www.getshifter.io/ - which spins up WP in a Docker container when you want to update it.
(A similar services is https://www.hardypress.com/ )
@danyork They're hosted on my own webspace, but their non-dynamic nature makes them easily cacheable by CDN. Most requests probably not even touching my server.
@jbaert Ah, that makes sense.
If you have your own space, how are you handling TLS for HTTPS support? (I've used Let's Encrypt before but one of my current hosting environments doesn't work well with that.)
@danyork let's encrypt + rewriting rules in .htaccess
@danyork creator of that plugin recommends lando and localWP
Benji Mauer@jbaert thank you for this I feel like a lot of WordPress sites should be static after they’re built.