Publishing ClassicPress as a static site for free

I’ve just been playing with a neat process that lets you publish a static version of your CP site using a plugin called WP2Static. This plugin will generate static files for your site and then deploy it to locations like Amazon S3, GitHub or Netlify. There is a pro version that will do it automatically - with the free version you need to trigger a manual deploy.

I’ve just set up a ClassicPress site on my home machine. I can make changes to the content locally and test it all to see that it’s good. Then I go to WP2Static and hit deploy and the static files are created and get pushed to GitHub (all the GitHub settings are saved in the plugin for reuse). I have been testing on an empty CP site and the process takes about 55 seconds.

Then I have Netlify linked to the GitHub repo and it picks up the new files and publishes them.

Not a bad approach if you are the only person needing to work on the site. Hosting costs are $0 and you end up with a very secure site. Not suitable for every site of course, but may be useful for some.

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Been using Simply Static for years now…love it. Only complaint is that I’ve had to manually upload to S3, etc.

So WP2Static can deploy automagically to S3 within the plugin, or is nerdy wizardry needed?

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AMAZING! Just tried it. Very bad a$$.

You win the day.

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