5 ms·

Just a reminder, always add on some static page generator on top of Wordpress so you completely avoid the class of problems with "too many database connections"

Just a reminder, always add on some static page generator on top of Wordpress so you completely avoid the class of problems with "too many database connections". Yes that error is MySQL specific but the class of problems you're avoid is: not hitting the database for fairly static content like blog posts.

_joel 4y ago
and caching...
- orev 4y ago
  Outside of using a CDN, just simply using static files gives you caching for free at the file system level. Linux automatically keeps files in RAM when they’re used.
  - _joel 4y ago
    It's not just static files but database calls to construct pages
    - eatonphil 4y ago
      Hmm? Generating static pages avoids database calls to construct pages. You do it once when you publish/edit a post. Then every reader never makes a database call again.
      - _joel 4y ago
        I think we're arguing the same point, via different means.
        orev 4y ago
        Just to help with future understanding of how threads go off the rails: eatonphil added a comment about using static files instead of dynamic, then your reply was “and caching”, meaning “in addition to static files, also use caching”. At this point in the conversation, we’re talking about only static files with caching, so it doesn’t really follow that you’re bringing up “database connections” again, since that’s already been excluded in this thread.
        _joel 4y ago
        I should have put caching also helps if you can't produce static stites via the application (i.e. some shopping cart software), not just wordpress.
        eatonphil 4y ago
        Ah, now I understand what you meant.
keehun 4y ago
Is there a plug-in or another software that does this? I’ve been looking for ways to statically “archive” a Wordpress site so I can host it on GitHub Pages but still have the editing/theme/plug-in support. I don’t care about the search functionality.
- thunderbong 4y ago
  Simply Static https://wordpress.org/plugins/simply-static/ https://wordpress.org/plugins/simply-static/
  - codegeek 4y ago
    Problem with these plugins is that if you have a large database with posts/pages, it could run into memory/CPU issues while trying to generate the static files and can intermittently fail unless you are on a beefy server.
  - rrosen326 4y ago
    Has anyone actually done this? I looked into it briefly, came away thinking it was going to be non-trivial to get working (or might have downstream bugs), and gave it up as not worth it. But I could have been completely wrong. Anyone have real world experience? (BTW - My site is small and 99% of users are not logged in, and 99% of pages are unchanging, so a perfect use case for a static site.)
    - cricalix 4y ago
      Yep. Did it this weekend. Moved main blog over to a different subdomain, added basic auth to stop it being crawled, added Simply Static, pressed button and a few minutes later the main site was updated. Some perf tweaks I made were to point the main site’s wp-content/uploads at the WP htdocs via a nginx path mapping, and to tell SS to never export anything in uploads. Reduces the site generation to just the html, css, and JS.
      - cricalix 4y ago
simonw 4y ago
Cloudflare is a great option for this.
- eatonphil 4y ago
  Sure that's fine too all I mean is that you can run WP on a $5 Linode/DO VM and handle the front page of HN but you need to do static page generation. I think people underestimate what's possible cheaply and simply with static pages. (Not saying Cloudflare is not free for this load but it is a separate additional step you'd need.)
  - simonw 4y ago
    I hadn't realized how easy static pages were to add to Wordpress - looks like it's just a plugin. Yeah that's probably easier than Cloudflare (which is still very easy).
Twirrim 4y ago
Some 10ish Years ago what I really needed for work was a way to have a dynamic/staging environment with wordpress, and then to be able to deploy a fully statically generated version of the site. We had dozens of government agencies we were working with at the time, and there just wasn't anything suitable available. One of wordpress's delights on the DB layer at the time (may still be true?) is that a sizeable number of the database entries were marshalled php objects. So many of them also ended up encoding the domain name in some way, that what we ended up doing was writing some code to essentially just rsync files from one server to the other, and then download the tables from MySQL, update all the records one at a time, and then upload to the new database location. It worked, remarkably well, but yikes. The potential fragility in that solution always scared me. When I left that company was when static site generators started to take off, but they were all still very techie oriented, with markdown files, rather than any kind of dynamic website to create the content in. That was one of those rare cases where it felt like I could actually see a potential product & market.
- throwaway14356 4y ago
  long long ago i never trusted wp or other cms/ blogging software but since i wanted to play with all of them at the time i would just download the html it outputs delete the php files and replaced them with the static html. Adding new content either involved repeating the process or i wrote some simple newpost.php that would update all the html files. the traffic to the admin area looking to run known exploits was quite funny. I suppose one could automate the process and temporarily de-weaponize the website to enable updates then swap the html back in when done.

_joel 4y ago

and caching...

orev 4y ago
Outside of using a CDN, just simply using static files gives you caching for free at the file system level. Linux automatically keeps files in RAM when they’re used.
- _joel 4y ago
  It's not just static files but database calls to construct pages
  - eatonphil 4y ago
    Hmm? Generating static pages avoids database calls to construct pages. You do it once when you publish/edit a post. Then every reader never makes a database call again.
    - _joel 4y ago
      I think we're arguing the same point, via different means.
      - orev 4y ago
        Just to help with future understanding of how threads go off the rails: eatonphil added a comment about using static files instead of dynamic, then your reply was “and caching”, meaning “in addition to static files, also use caching”. At this point in the conversation, we’re talking about only static files with caching, so it doesn’t really follow that you’re bringing up “database connections” again, since that’s already been excluded in this thread.
        _joel 4y ago
        I should have put caching also helps if you can't produce static stites via the application (i.e. some shopping cart software), not just wordpress.
        eatonphil 4y ago
        Ah, now I understand what you meant.

keehun 4y ago

Is there a plug-in or another software that does this? I’ve been looking for ways to statically “archive” a Wordpress site so I can host it on GitHub Pages but still have the editing/theme/plug-in support. I don’t care about the search functionality.

thunderbong 4y ago
Simply Static https://wordpress.org/plugins/simply-static/ https://wordpress.org/plugins/simply-static/
- codegeek 4y ago
  Problem with these plugins is that if you have a large database with posts/pages, it could run into memory/CPU issues while trying to generate the static files and can intermittently fail unless you are on a beefy server.
- rrosen326 4y ago
  Has anyone actually done this? I looked into it briefly, came away thinking it was going to be non-trivial to get working (or might have downstream bugs), and gave it up as not worth it. But I could have been completely wrong. Anyone have real world experience? (BTW - My site is small and 99% of users are not logged in, and 99% of pages are unchanging, so a perfect use case for a static site.)
  - cricalix 4y ago
    Yep. Did it this weekend. Moved main blog over to a different subdomain, added basic auth to stop it being crawled, added Simply Static, pressed button and a few minutes later the main site was updated. Some perf tweaks I made were to point the main site’s wp-content/uploads at the WP htdocs via a nginx path mapping, and to tell SS to never export anything in uploads. Reduces the site generation to just the html, css, and JS.
    - cricalix 4y ago

simonw 4y ago

Cloudflare is a great option for this.

eatonphil 4y ago
Sure that's fine too all I mean is that you can run WP on a $5 Linode/DO VM and handle the front page of HN but you need to do static page generation. I think people underestimate what's possible cheaply and simply with static pages. (Not saying Cloudflare is not free for this load but it is a separate additional step you'd need.)
- simonw 4y ago
  I hadn't realized how easy static pages were to add to Wordpress - looks like it's just a plugin. Yeah that's probably easier than Cloudflare (which is still very easy).

Twirrim 4y ago

Some 10ish Years ago what I really needed for work was a way to have a dynamic/staging environment with wordpress, and then to be able to deploy a fully statically generated version of the site. We had dozens of government agencies we were working with at the time, and there just wasn't anything suitable available. One of wordpress's delights on the DB layer at the time (may still be true?) is that a sizeable number of the database entries were marshalled php objects. So many of them also ended up encoding the domain name in some way, that what we ended up doing was writing some code to essentially just rsync files from one server to the other, and then download the tables from MySQL, update all the records one at a time, and then upload to the new database location. It worked, remarkably well, but yikes. The potential fragility in that solution always scared me. When I left that company was when static site generators started to take off, but they were all still very techie oriented, with markdown files, rather than any kind of dynamic website to create the content in. That was one of those rare cases where it felt like I could actually see a potential product & market.

throwaway14356 4y ago
long long ago i never trusted wp or other cms/ blogging software but since i wanted to play with all of them at the time i would just download the html it outputs delete the php files and replaced them with the static html. Adding new content either involved repeating the process or i wrote some simple newpost.php that would update all the html files. the traffic to the admin area looking to run known exploits was quite funny. I suppose one could automate the process and temporarily de-weaponize the website to enable updates then swap the html back in when done.