{"id":204,"date":"2024-03-04T10:51:59","date_gmt":"2024-03-04T10:51:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.formprism.com\/what-is-a-static-wordpress-site-why-would-you-want-one\/"},"modified":"2024-03-04T10:52:01","modified_gmt":"2024-03-04T10:52:01","slug":"what-is-a-static-wordpress-site-why-would-you-want-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.formprism.com\/what-is-a-static-wordpress-site-why-would-you-want-one\/","title":{"rendered":"What is a static WordPress site? Why would you want one?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div readability=\"169.49654053131\">\n<aside class=\"single-post__aside\">\n<\/aside>\n<p>Static websites? Isn\u2019t that old-school? In the early days of the web, <em>all <\/em>websites were static. Today, turning your dynamic WordPress site into a high-performing static one might be a viable option for you. Visitors get a super-fast browsing experience, while content managers continue to use the WordPress authoring experience and plugin ecosystem. Hackers have next to no surface area to attack, because the only public-facing resources are static pages. We asked Miriam Schwab \u2014 an expert on static WordPress sites and CEO of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.strattic.com\">Strattic<\/a> \u2014 to uncover the secret powers of static websites.<\/p>\n<section class=\"aside aside--post embed\" readability=\"35\">\n<h3>Who is Miriam Schwab<\/h3>\n<p>Miriam Schwab has been working with WordPress for over 14 years, and she loves it. After founding and managing a WordPress development agency for thirteen years, she\u2019s now the co-founder and CEO of Strattic. Strattic converts WordPress websites into static sites. Miriam heads a team of twenty, based in Israel, the US, and Germany.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-why-would-you-want-to-turn-a-dynamic-site-built-with-wordpress-into-a-static-one\">Why would you want to turn a dynamic site built with WordPress into a static one?<\/h4>\n<p>When I started building websites in the early 2000s, they were very much static. That\u2019s why I often describe the shift to static websites as coming full circle.<\/p>\n<p>A static website has several significant advantages:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><strong>Speed<\/strong>. Static sites are generally faster because every page is prerendered \u2013 with no underlying processing server, no database queries, and no PHP processing, the pages can be quickly served to the user. Another way they\u2019re faster is that every page can be served up through a CDN. In your standard dynamic site, only the static assets like images, CSS, and JS can be CDNed. The actual HTML pages, however, cannot because they are virtual.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Security<\/strong>. Your standard dynamic website has a big attack surface. Every layer from the Apache server to the MySQL to every plugin installed on the site are potentially vulnerable. It\u2019s hard to make sure all the holes are plugged, all the time. With a static site, there\u2019s barely anything to breach.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Scalability<\/strong>. Supporting a high-traffic site is costly and can be complicated. And even when you do that successfully, a spike in traffic can seriously slow down a site and cause issues. Static sites scale effortlessly. One of our customers got in the press and their traffic increased ten-fold, and we didn\u2019t feel it at all! The site scaled, and not only that \u2013 got faster. That\u2019s the weird thing about CDNs \u2013 sites get faster the more traffic they get.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Less management and maintenance<\/strong>. With a dynamic site, there\u2019s a need for regular maintenance, like upgrades, security tweaks, speed optimizations, etc. Not so on a statically generated site (this comes back to the above points).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>I repeatedly hear from people who have gone the full static route (also known as Jamstack) that they end up spending a lot of time coding to manage the content on their sites. Also, the stack for non-WordPress static sites is very diverse and constantly changing. Every static site needs a CMS, static site generator, storage, CDN, and even version control. And for each of those layers, tens if not hundreds of solutions exist. With WordPress, you get most of that in one system. You need to take care of the static layer separately. For this, you can use a plugin, or an end-to-end platform like Strattic.<\/p>\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-surely-there-are-disadvantages\">Surely there are disadvantages?<\/h4>\n<p>The disadvantages are that some types of functionality won\u2019t work out of the box on static sites. You need to put in some work to make it static-compatible. Sometimes it\u2019s simple to make a site static-ready, but sometimes it\u2019s quite complicated.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Also, it\u2019s a new paradigm and requires a bit of a mind-shift in terms of how you manage your site. If you use your own static publishing plugin, you need to configure the whole environment from the WordPress hosting to the static storage to the CDN. You have to make sure it catches every page, redirect, image, et cetera without crashing the server.<\/p>\n<p>On Strattic, we automatically replace a lot of traditionally dynamic functionality with static-friendly solutions. For example, if you have search on your site, we replace it with Algolia-powered search without you having to do anything and we support WP form plugins like Gravity Forms and CF7 out of the box. However, our different approach to security means that you need to enter additional credentials to access your site.<\/p>\n<p>Also, publishing your changes to your live static site involves an additional step: first, you publish your content on the WordPress site, and then you publish it to the static site, which can take a few minutes to go live. It\u2019s just one additional button, but it\u2019s a different flow.<\/p>\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-and-the-potential-benefits-in-terms-of-seo\">And the potential benefits in terms of SEO?<\/h4>\n<p>There are potential SEO benefits from running a static site since they tend to load faster. This, of course, can lower bounce rates and improve conversion rates. In addition, they are extremely difficult to hack. Sites don\u2019t risk being delisted from Google\u2019s search index for malware and the like.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In general, running an SEO-friendly static website is the same as a regular WP site. So, make sure you have good content, titles, meta tags, links, etc. Ideally, a statically generated site can also optimize using an amazing tool like <a href=\"https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/\">Yoast SEO<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>At Strattic, we love Yoast SEO very much. So much so, that we made it one of our first priorities to support it completely: all metadata, Open Graph tags, etc. publish perfectly to the static site. In addition, we publish Yoast\u2019s XML sitemap, robots.txt, and even support 301 redirects created using Yoast. Of course, we also support redirects generated with the Redirection and Safe Redirect Manager plugins.<\/p>\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-how-fast-does-a-static-site-get-and-what-else-do-you-need-to-get-the-most-out-of-it\">How fast does a static site get and what else do you need to get the most out of it?<\/h4>\n<p>The speed improvements depend on how you built the site, and where you are hosting it. We have seen speed increases of up to 20 times faster, but running accurate speed tests is challenging. Sometimes, the numbers don\u2019t reflect a huge speed increase but the site feels way faster for users. After visiting one page on a site, every subsequent visit feels nearly instant.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Also, all pages on a statically generated site can be served up completely via a CDN, including the HTML pages. The content pages on a standard WP site don\u2019t actually exist as standalone files: they are virtual pages that are generated upon demand. So, in that case, the files that can be served via a CDN are only the static files like images, video, JS and CSS. A user accessing a content page depends on it reaching them from the physical location of the WP server, which in many cases can be pretty far. This could be a visitor in the UK trying to view a site hosted in Texas. All of the pages in a static site exist as standalone files, including the content pages. The system prerenders these as HTML files, so it can served them via a CDN, also making them faster for people around the globe.<\/p>\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-as-you-said-security-is-another-major-advantage-of-running-a-static-wordpress-site-right\">As you said, security is another major advantage of running a static WordPress site, right?<\/h4>\n<p>Yep, exactly, security is definitely a major advantage of static sites. Your standard WP site runs on a LAMP server. Every layer of that server has potential vulnerabilities, from the operating system to the MySQL to the PHP. Then on top of that, you\u2019ve got the WordPress site which is running many plugins. All these plugins could need a security update at any time. Every minute it takes for you to update the site opens a window of opportunity for the armies of hacker bots scouring the web looking for these known weaknesses.<\/p>\n<p>A static site is essentially just a collection of files. There\u2019s no processing or querying going on, so there\u2019s basically not much to hack. On Strattic, we decouple the original WP site from the public-facing site. Then, we store it in a container that shuts down when not in use, and is only accessible to Strattic-authenticated users. As a result, owners of statically generated sites can sleep better at night \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-let-s-say-you-have-a-good-use-case-for-building-a-static-site-with-wordpress-where-do-you-start\">Let\u2019s say you have a good use case for building a static site with WordPress, where do you start?\u00a0<\/h4>\n<p>Users have a few options of how they can build a static site with WordPress:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>You can build a <a href=\"https:\/\/yoast.com\/what-is-a-headless-cms\/\">headless WordPress website<\/a>. That means the WP admin is used purely for content management and not for the frontend. The frontend gets the content from the WP Rest API or WPGraphQL. This is a pretty complicated way of building a site since you would need to build a frontend that ties into the content management. Then, you have to keep creating new connections as the site develops. It also makes using\u00a0Gutenberg blocks, or Elementor, or almost any plugins that impact the way your site looks more difficult and sometimes impossible.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>You can build your site in WordPress as usual (themes, plugins, and all) and then use a\u00a0platform that specializes in generating a static version of your site. Like Strattic, for instance. We take care of the entire environment, and support important WP functionality that might otherwise be complicated to get working on a static site. Some examples are Yoast SEO, search (we replace native WP search with high-quality Algolia powered search, out of the box, for all our users), WPML, Polylang, 301 redirects, password-protected pages, scheduled posts, Gravity Forms, Contact Form 7, CoSchedule, and more. <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-to-recap-what-are-your-5-top-tips-for-people-who-want-to-launch-a-static-wordpress-site\">To recap, what are your 5 top tips for people who want to launch a static WordPress site?<\/h4>\n<ol>\n<li>Familiarize yourself with what \u201cstatic\u201d means, and what its benefits are. There\u2019s tons of content out there on this subject. Another popular term used for describing this approach to website development is \u201cJamstack\u201d. It\u2019s meant to be positioned relative to the LAMP stack, which is considered older and legacy. \u201cJam\u201d stands for Javascript, APIs and Markup.<\/li>\n<li>Research the available options for hosting and publishing static WP sites and see what works best for you.<\/li>\n<li>Make sure you are using static-friendly tools. For example, third-party form systems like TypeForm, Marketo, Wufoo, Hubspot, MailChimp etc. that feed form submissions directly to them are great. If you are using Strattic, you can also use Gravity Forms or CF7 \u2013 WordPress form plugins that don\u2019t work on static out of the box, but we support them on Strattic. You can see many examples of tools you can use to replace traditionally \u201cdynamic\u201d functionality in our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.strattic.com\/static-tools\/\">Static Tools Directory<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Test your static site thoroughly before launching it. Strattic offers a free trial and you can migrate a copy of your site over and publish it to static, prior to connecting your website domain. Also, all Strattic users get a static Preview site in addition to the static production site. Even once you connect your domain, you can always test your WP site first in the Preview static environment to make sure everything looks ok before deploying changes to your live site for all to see.<\/li>\n<li>Celebrate being part of an exciting trend that helps ensure WordPress\u2019 future for all! \ud83c\udf89<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<div class=\"post__author\" readability=\"29.569620253165\">\n<div readability=\"8.3164556962025\">\n<span class=\"author__name\"><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/yoast.com\/about-us\/team\/edwin-toonen\/\"><br \/>\nEdwin Toonen <\/a><br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Edwin is a strategic content specialist. Before joining Yoast, he spent years honing his skill at The Netherlands\u2019 leading web design magazine.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><img src=\"https:\/\/www.formprism.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/what-is-a-static-wordpress-site-why-would-you-want-one_65e5a7d0f4006.png\" width=\"75\" height=\"85\" alt=\"Avatar of Edwin Toonen\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" fetchpriorty=\"low\"> <\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Static websites? Isn\u2019t that old-school? In the early days of the web, all websites were static. 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