Q: I started using Simply static a couple of month ago...
I jumped on the LTD when i saw it!
Awesome job! I do have some issues with sites on my current hosting not exporting static sites correctly - might be due to caching (I will open a ticket for that) however, exporting static site from a local (local software) site works like a charm. not ideal for my model but i'm pretty confident your support will help me fix that.
I tried different services you highlighted in your documentation:
1. Cloudflare (via github) works great! and free!
2. Bunny CDN is the fastest and requires a small monthly fee.
3. Netlify is fast (via github) but beware of hidden bills that might skyrocket as discussed on this reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/1b14bty/netlify_just_sent_me_a_104k_bill_for_a_simple/
My questions:
1. What is the best practice for my wordpress sites to remain 'hidden' and get only my static site shown on search engines? do i need to turn off 'Search engine visibility' every time i push an update/ generate static files?
Also what do you suggest? having a subdomain for my worpdress site (say wp.mysite.com) and use the main domain (www.mysite.com) for my static site? or should i use a completely different domain for my wordpress instal?
Thanks!
Ludo
Patrick_SimplyStatic
Jun 27, 2024A: Hey Ludo,
it sounds like you already had some decent success with Simply Static; awesome!
Your questions:
Best practice to hide WordPress:
We usually recommend using "Basic Auth" to protect the entire WordPress website with a username and password. You can add those credentials in Simply Static -> Settings -> Misc -> Basic Auth.
This way, Simply Static can still access the page to run static exports, but it's blocked from public access.
We also wrote a little code snippet for a customer to automatically toggle the search engine visibility (no-index by default, but replacing it on the static site) - I would need to look that up, but that's also an option.
We are also working on a service called "Central" that solves that problem more deeply.
This will allow you to disable WordPress (and the entire webserver) completely when not in use and quickly restart it if you want to make changes.
It will also ship with an optimized environment for Simply Static, where everything is optimized for running static site exports (including long-running exports, CORS configuration, optimized filesystem structure, and so on).
This is 100% optional, but it might be handy if you plan to convert many websites (as we also offer a central dashboard to quickly access, export, start, and stop WP sites).
Subdomain / Domain:
I recommend using WP on a subdomain and the primary domain for the static site.
While an entirely different domain would be even more secure, it might also be more challenging to memorize in the long term.
LudovicV
Verified purchaser
Thank you for your quick reply Patrick! much appreciated! is "Basic Auth" a plugin? or do you have a doc on how to implement this?
I'd love to hear more about "central" - looks promising!
2 more questions:
1. how does generated static sites handle cookieless analytics such as Matomo or Plausible analytics? I'm thinking the self hosted solution here....
2. the code shown on the picture here https://simplystatic.com/docs/how-to-update-content-on-your-static-website/#Generate-static-export-on-publishing-a-post sends me to a completely different code that i can copy/paste in my "function.php" where can we grab this code?
Cheers!
Ludo
Verified purchaser
> Basic Auth
It's not a plugin but something you add to your .htaccess file (within the root directory of WordPress).
There are a couple of easy generators, so you don't have to figure that out yourself: https://www.web2generators.com/apache-tools/htpasswd-generator
> How does generated static sites handle cookieless analytics such as Matomo or Plausible analytics? I'm thinking the self hosted solution here
The same way as in WordPress.
All you need to do is add the JS snippet from Matomo or Plausible (and maybe upload the verification HTML page to your static site for the domain).
> the code shown on the picture here https://simplystatic.com/docs/how-to-update-content-on-your-static-website/#Generate-static-export-on-publishing-a-post sends me to a completely different code that i can copy/paste in my "function.php" where can we grab this code?
Oh yeah, I just sent you the updated one in your support ticket 20 seconds ago! 😅