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24 September 2023 2:17 pm
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There seem now to be a number of free services that allow you to host static websites, however as static websites seem to be a little bit old hat I’ve not paid them much attention, until now. It occurred to me that it’s possible to generat...

There seem now to be a number of free services that allow you to host static websites, however as static websites seem to be a little bit old hat I’ve not paid them much attention, until now.

It occurred to me that it’s possible to generate a static website from a dynamic site (like WordPress), then automatically mirror the static version to a free static hosting account, maybe updating it daily.

Pro’s

  • It’s free
  • It’s super quick and very resilient to DDOS attacks etc
  • You don’t need a (relatively expensive) WordPress server on the Internet (desktop will do)
  • It’s unhackable (directly) because it’s just static pages

Con’s

  • You (initially) lose dynamic features like logging in, comments, feedback forms
  • … ?

Experiment

Process as follows;

  • Set up an experiment using my recently created Local WordPress / Containers setup.
    (as documented in the HOWTO’s)

  • Added the simply static plugin to generate a static version of the site in a local folder.

  • Created a GitLab project

  • Added the local folder containing the static folder to the GitLab project.

  • Created a new project in CloudFlare Pages (which is one of the aforementioned free services)

  • Created a new CloudFlare project

  • Connected the CloudFlare project to the GitLab project

  • Clicked Publish

Results

On the static version I turned off the preloader to make the loading speed more visible. Would be interested in feedback / how it looks to others.

  • better with / without pre-loader?
  • is the speed noticeable?
  • apart from feedback forms, any noticeable downsides?

Updating the (static) site involved making a change on WordPress, then clicking Deploy in Simply Static … (the rest is done with automated hooks) … total publication (update) time on a small site like that seems to be around 1-2 mins.

Might try it on Linux.uk, although it’s a larger site … might be somewhat slower to update …

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