6 ms·

Show HN: HardyPress – Use WordPress as a static site generator

86 points by zener79 9y ago

alok-g 9y ago
Simply Static is an alternative for self-hosting: https://wordpress.org/plugins/simply-static/ https://wordpress.org/plugins/simply-static/ I'm learning how to then put the static site on a CDN. Are there tools for that, or I would be using just FTP. Thanks.
- kingkool68 9y ago
  You could just put a CDN in front of WordPress and presto change-o your site is static.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - alok-g 9y ago
    Could I use a CDN plugin (I found yours in a comment) in the Wordpress development environment itself? (I won't be hosting Wordpress live in production, only the static pages.) Thanks!
- Dystopian 9y ago
  +1 - I use this for my personal site - it's great. The only thing I found is you can't have any orphaned pages (like hidden ones) from the homepage. As it scrapes down if there aren't any links to it it won't find it. Small problem, definitely cuts down on the work I need to do for my personal tool site though.
everdev 9y ago
This looks exciting. As much as I dislike WordPress, it's here to stay and clients ask for it by name. This sounds like a nice compromise for those that want a GUI to make content changes but also want the security and performance advantages of a static site.
- Veen 9y ago
  It's a nice idea for novices, but there are WordPress plugins that can create static sites from WordPress installations.
  - zener79 9y ago
    Yes, there are some plugins that "staticize" your website, but 1) you still need to have and maintain secure the WordPress Installation somewhere. With HardyPress WP can be paused and restored when needed with a click. 2) you have to download the static version and upload it somewhere else manually (your client certainly can't do it on their own). HardyPress does it with a click. 3) contact forms and search will stop working. With HardyPress, if you use CF7, everything will work seemlessy. To solve the problems above HaryPress needs to hosts your WP installation.
    - huxflux 9y ago
      And pay you money :)
      - zener79 9y ago
        Yep, like for every hosting solution ;-)
  - everdev 9y ago
    Any that you recommend?
superasn 9y ago
This concept is very good. Kudos. One of my scariest memories of getting hacked (back when I was a total greenhorn and cloud computing was rare) was hosting Wordpress blog on the same server as our main site. It got hacked bad. We had viagra links in all our files and it was a total nightmare to cleanup. Upon research I found out that there is an entire market of people trying to find WP hacks and sell it online. God knows how big it must be now. Anyway, thankfully now you can just host your WP blog on an EC2/DO instance and eliminate all risks. But always keep your WP database and instance separate is what I learned from that.
dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago
Is anyone using it and can comment on stability and potential issues?
- dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago
  OK so I set up a test account an things are mostly fine, although there are still rough edges. For example, onece the static site is deployed and you click Login in the default theme, you get: > error on line 12 at column 10: Opening and ending tag mismatch: meta line 0 and head This is after two first minutes, so I guess there are still things to work on. In any case, for more advanced users your product is a great no-no, since the main advantage of WP is that it's FOSS - who would want to become your hostage? I see a lot of potential for an open source solution, the idea is really good.
  - guitarbill 9y ago
    > since the main advantage of WP is that it's FOSS Maybe, maybe not anymore. Now the main advantage of WP is that it's ubiquitous/low barrier to entry and has (too) many plugins/themes/etc available. Incidentally, that's also WP's main disadvantage because those things greatly increase it's attach surface.
- csbartus 9y ago
  I'm using it since December and never had problems at all. Moreover the support is just perfect. I needed a Multisite feature and they've added it in no time. https://mothemes.baby https://mothemes.baby
have_faith 9y ago
I build a lot of Wordpress sites of all types of complexity, including sites that could benefit from being static. My main reasons for likely not using your service would be: You become my new hosting company and that worries me. But more importantly, these 3 selling points "Support for Contact Forms 7", "Instant search out of the box", "Keep using plugins". I now have to vet plugins myself and guess if they are going to break in your system. It also makes me think about what I can or can't do when building themes myself which I usually don't have to do. The part about you injecting code into the site to add your own instant search is also worrying. My main takeaway would be that your service is appropriate for novice users and maybe I'm not the target audience. But novice users might not know what static websites are or the differences between them and non-static sites and so I would market the service differently. Instead of focusing on technical features I would just sell it as a hosted Wordpress service with extra bells and whistles that make your sites faster than a normal host. The focus being fast, secure, ease of use, low maintenance etc and renegating the technical aspects about it being headless, generating static pages, WP running on a separate domain and so on to just a technical explanation page for users that are interested. I hope I haven't dissuaded you, Good luck!
- zener79 9y ago
  Many thanks for your thoughts :-) Actually yes, we are a new hosting company, but the live site is hosted an a AWS-S3 bucket with a CDN in front of it, so, even if you don't trust us, I could feel quite safe with it. In my personal experience, I used to have a web agency with dozens of WordPress installation to keep alive, mostly of them where simple “brochure” sites. I used auto-update mechanisms and caching layers provided by the hosting service, but it happened more than once to have security/performance/technical problems and headaches. Only after I put the static copy of these sites online I started sleeping well at night. There was no way that things could go wrong. Of course it is easier if you build them with the "static solution" in mind. Anyway you will find a compatibility list of the plugin you are using on the site dashboard once your site is on HardyPress.
  - IgorPartola 9y ago
    Why can't you export the static site and let me host it myself?
indigodaddy 9y ago
Are comments integrated in this system?
- zener79 9y ago
  You can use some external service like Disqus, Discourse or similar.
  - csbartus 9y ago
    What about Wordpress.com/ Jetpack comments? Live commenting the Wordpress way would be wonderful
caio1982 9y ago
Nice idea, I hope it succeeds! However I would never move my critical WP stuff to a new unknown hosting, thanks. If it was some sort of plugin or special setup I could "install" on my servers I would really pay a decent amount for it though, it would be ideal IMHO.
dberhane 9y ago
Gatsbyjs (reactjs based static site generator) is a very good free alternative. It has a plugin which allows you to use WordPress as a headless CMS to create/update content and another plugin which allows to push your the WordPress content to Github Pages (Gitlab or other static site hosting services): https://github.com/gatsbyjs/gatsby/tree/master/examples/using-wordpress https://github.com/gatsbyjs/gatsby/tree/master/examples/usin...
huxflux 9y ago
Could anyone make a list of free-alternatives? Tiresome seeing every little idea turning into a 5 USD a month SaaS-startup.
- guitarbill 9y ago
  Free alternative: Host WP yourself? Use a different static site generator? Come on, this clearly isn't yet-another-static-site generator for hackers but a commercial product for people who still use Wordpress, but not so foolish/desperate/cheap that they don't realise the security implications.
  - harlanji 9y ago
    There are a couple of free plugins to make WP sites static, using various methods. So yes, use a plugin and you can get an HTML copy of your WP site with caveats that should make sense, and you can then host the html anywhere... there are 2-3 plugins that I saw, but I don't run a WP site so I can't comment on each. This product looks like it'll do ops and stuff for you, so there may still be value if it just works.
    - zener79 9y ago
      Actually with those plugin you still have some drawback: first you still need to have and maintain secure the live WordPress installation somewhere, second you have to download the static version and upload it somewhere else, last but not least your contact forms and search will stop working.
- sleepychu 9y ago
  Is it? The market will make sure that those ideas which are valuable solutions to problems people have will survive (if priced correctly). This means that problem solvers are compensated for their work so they can keep iterating. I don't really understand what your objection could be!
  - superasn 9y ago
sondh 9y ago
How safe is this in comparison to running WordPress in a container with all uploads go to S3 for example? WordPress provides ready to use Docker images which should be fairly easy to upgrade. Sure, it's not for the novice users...
- zener79 9y ago
  There is huge differences between running a live WordPress site on a docker container (where you still have php, mysql, etc), and running it as a static site in a serverless environment.
jasonshen 9y ago
Congrats on the launch! Love the idea of speeding up WP sites via static pages. Do we need to transfer our domain to you as well or just the Wordpress installation? Just posted to PH as well - https://www.producthunt.com/posts/hardypress https://www.producthunt.com/posts/hardypress
- zener79 9y ago
  Many thanks Jason for your effort on posting it on ProductHunt. We were thinking of postponing the launch on PH when the new version of the site is ready, but that's okay :-) You don't need to transfer the domain to us (we are not registrar), you just need to set a CNAME when your site on HardyPress is production ready
kingkool68 9y ago
I scratched my own itch and made a plugin that enables you to put your entire WordPress site behind a CDN and manages intelligently flushing the cache. https://github.com/kingkool68/wordpress-cdn-integration https://github.com/kingkool68/wordpress-cdn-integration
pascalxus 9y ago
Great Idea! I haven't tried it yet, but This is really awesome in concept. Also, you may want to alleviate some people's concerns about using plugins. The first thing that comes to my mind, would all my existing plugins still work. You'd probably have to try it out and do a test.
dotBen 9y ago
What is the value of using this over a service like WP Engine (http://wpengine.com http://wpengine.com)?

86 points by zener79 9y ago

Simply Static is an alternative for self-hosting: https://wordpress.org/plugins/simply-static/ https://wordpress.org/plugins/simply-static/ I'm learning how to then put the static site on a CDN. Are there tools for that, or I would be using just FTP. Thanks.

kingkool68 9y ago
You could just put a CDN in front of WordPress and presto change-o your site is static.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- alok-g 9y ago
  Could I use a CDN plugin (I found yours in a comment) in the Wordpress development environment itself? (I won't be hosting Wordpress live in production, only the static pages.) Thanks!
Dystopian 9y ago
+1 - I use this for my personal site - it's great. The only thing I found is you can't have any orphaned pages (like hidden ones) from the homepage. As it scrapes down if there aren't any links to it it won't find it. Small problem, definitely cuts down on the work I need to do for my personal tool site though.

everdev 9y ago

This looks exciting. As much as I dislike WordPress, it's here to stay and clients ask for it by name. This sounds like a nice compromise for those that want a GUI to make content changes but also want the security and performance advantages of a static site.

Veen 9y ago
It's a nice idea for novices, but there are WordPress plugins that can create static sites from WordPress installations.
- zener79 9y ago
  Yes, there are some plugins that "staticize" your website, but 1) you still need to have and maintain secure the WordPress Installation somewhere. With HardyPress WP can be paused and restored when needed with a click. 2) you have to download the static version and upload it somewhere else manually (your client certainly can't do it on their own). HardyPress does it with a click. 3) contact forms and search will stop working. With HardyPress, if you use CF7, everything will work seemlessy. To solve the problems above HaryPress needs to hosts your WP installation.
  - huxflux 9y ago
    And pay you money :)
    - zener79 9y ago
      Yep, like for every hosting solution ;-)
- everdev 9y ago
  Any that you recommend?

superasn 9y ago

This concept is very good. Kudos. One of my scariest memories of getting hacked (back when I was a total greenhorn and cloud computing was rare) was hosting Wordpress blog on the same server as our main site. It got hacked bad. We had viagra links in all our files and it was a total nightmare to cleanup. Upon research I found out that there is an entire market of people trying to find WP hacks and sell it online. God knows how big it must be now. Anyway, thankfully now you can just host your WP blog on an EC2/DO instance and eliminate all risks. But always keep your WP database and instance separate is what I learned from that.

dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago

Is anyone using it and can comment on stability and potential issues?

dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago
OK so I set up a test account an things are mostly fine, although there are still rough edges. For example, onece the static site is deployed and you click Login in the default theme, you get: > error on line 12 at column 10: Opening and ending tag mismatch: meta line 0 and head This is after two first minutes, so I guess there are still things to work on. In any case, for more advanced users your product is a great no-no, since the main advantage of WP is that it's FOSS - who would want to become your hostage? I see a lot of potential for an open source solution, the idea is really good.
- guitarbill 9y ago
  > since the main advantage of WP is that it's FOSS Maybe, maybe not anymore. Now the main advantage of WP is that it's ubiquitous/low barrier to entry and has (too) many plugins/themes/etc available. Incidentally, that's also WP's main disadvantage because those things greatly increase it's attach surface.
csbartus 9y ago
I'm using it since December and never had problems at all. Moreover the support is just perfect. I needed a Multisite feature and they've added it in no time. https://mothemes.baby https://mothemes.baby

have_faith 9y ago

I build a lot of Wordpress sites of all types of complexity, including sites that could benefit from being static. My main reasons for likely not using your service would be: You become my new hosting company and that worries me. But more importantly, these 3 selling points "Support for Contact Forms 7", "Instant search out of the box", "Keep using plugins". I now have to vet plugins myself and guess if they are going to break in your system. It also makes me think about what I can or can't do when building themes myself which I usually don't have to do. The part about you injecting code into the site to add your own instant search is also worrying. My main takeaway would be that your service is appropriate for novice users and maybe I'm not the target audience. But novice users might not know what static websites are or the differences between them and non-static sites and so I would market the service differently. Instead of focusing on technical features I would just sell it as a hosted Wordpress service with extra bells and whistles that make your sites faster than a normal host. The focus being fast, secure, ease of use, low maintenance etc and renegating the technical aspects about it being headless, generating static pages, WP running on a separate domain and so on to just a technical explanation page for users that are interested. I hope I haven't dissuaded you, Good luck!

zener79 9y ago
Many thanks for your thoughts :-) Actually yes, we are a new hosting company, but the live site is hosted an a AWS-S3 bucket with a CDN in front of it, so, even if you don't trust us, I could feel quite safe with it. In my personal experience, I used to have a web agency with dozens of WordPress installation to keep alive, mostly of them where simple “brochure” sites. I used auto-update mechanisms and caching layers provided by the hosting service, but it happened more than once to have security/performance/technical problems and headaches. Only after I put the static copy of these sites online I started sleeping well at night. There was no way that things could go wrong. Of course it is easier if you build them with the "static solution" in mind. Anyway you will find a compatibility list of the plugin you are using on the site dashboard once your site is on HardyPress.
- IgorPartola 9y ago
  Why can't you export the static site and let me host it myself?

indigodaddy 9y ago

Are comments integrated in this system?

zener79 9y ago
You can use some external service like Disqus, Discourse or similar.
- csbartus 9y ago
  What about Wordpress.com/ Jetpack comments? Live commenting the Wordpress way would be wonderful

caio1982 9y ago

Nice idea, I hope it succeeds! However I would never move my critical WP stuff to a new unknown hosting, thanks. If it was some sort of plugin or special setup I could "install" on my servers I would really pay a decent amount for it though, it would be ideal IMHO.

dberhane 9y ago

Gatsbyjs (reactjs based static site generator) is a very good free alternative. It has a plugin which allows you to use WordPress as a headless CMS to create/update content and another plugin which allows to push your the WordPress content to Github Pages (Gitlab or other static site hosting services): https://github.com/gatsbyjs/gatsby/tree/master/examples/using-wordpress https://github.com/gatsbyjs/gatsby/tree/master/examples/usin...

huxflux 9y ago

Could anyone make a list of free-alternatives? Tiresome seeing every little idea turning into a 5 USD a month SaaS-startup.

guitarbill 9y ago
Free alternative: Host WP yourself? Use a different static site generator? Come on, this clearly isn't yet-another-static-site generator for hackers but a commercial product for people who still use Wordpress, but not so foolish/desperate/cheap that they don't realise the security implications.
- harlanji 9y ago
  There are a couple of free plugins to make WP sites static, using various methods. So yes, use a plugin and you can get an HTML copy of your WP site with caveats that should make sense, and you can then host the html anywhere... there are 2-3 plugins that I saw, but I don't run a WP site so I can't comment on each. This product looks like it'll do ops and stuff for you, so there may still be value if it just works.
  - zener79 9y ago
    Actually with those plugin you still have some drawback: first you still need to have and maintain secure the live WordPress installation somewhere, second you have to download the static version and upload it somewhere else, last but not least your contact forms and search will stop working.
sleepychu 9y ago
Is it? The market will make sure that those ideas which are valuable solutions to problems people have will survive (if priced correctly). This means that problem solvers are compensated for their work so they can keep iterating. I don't really understand what your objection could be!
- superasn 9y ago

sondh 9y ago

How safe is this in comparison to running WordPress in a container with all uploads go to S3 for example? WordPress provides ready to use Docker images which should be fairly easy to upgrade. Sure, it's not for the novice users...

zener79 9y ago
There is huge differences between running a live WordPress site on a docker container (where you still have php, mysql, etc), and running it as a static site in a serverless environment.

jasonshen 9y ago

Congrats on the launch! Love the idea of speeding up WP sites via static pages. Do we need to transfer our domain to you as well or just the Wordpress installation? Just posted to PH as well - https://www.producthunt.com/posts/hardypress https://www.producthunt.com/posts/hardypress

zener79 9y ago
Many thanks Jason for your effort on posting it on ProductHunt. We were thinking of postponing the launch on PH when the new version of the site is ready, but that's okay :-) You don't need to transfer the domain to us (we are not registrar), you just need to set a CNAME when your site on HardyPress is production ready

kingkool68 9y ago

I scratched my own itch and made a plugin that enables you to put your entire WordPress site behind a CDN and manages intelligently flushing the cache. https://github.com/kingkool68/wordpress-cdn-integration https://github.com/kingkool68/wordpress-cdn-integration

pascalxus 9y ago

Great Idea! I haven't tried it yet, but This is really awesome in concept. Also, you may want to alleviate some people's concerns about using plugins. The first thing that comes to my mind, would all my existing plugins still work. You'd probably have to try it out and do a test.

dotBen 9y ago

What is the value of using this over a service like WP Engine (http://wpengine.com http://wpengine.com)?