There are a couple of reasons that can prevent Simply Static from starting a static export of your website. Let’s cover the most common problems you may face:
Table of Contents
Use Diagnostics to find the problem
The first step of debugging the problem should always be Simply Static -> Diagnostics. You will find a lot of useful information here that helps to get a general idea of why the export did not start:
URLs
You may not have an SSL certificate activated for your website. You will need one and serve your website via HTTPS to use a lot of the features Simply Static provides. GitHub, search and forms support, just to name a few.
Filesystem
Make sure the temporary directory is writeable. Simply Static will use that to save the static files for the website temporarily before sending them to your configured place (local directory, GitHub, BunnyCDN..).
How to fix
You can either change it yourself by navigating to the displayed path via SFTP or SSH and change the permissions or ask your hosting provider to modify it accordingly.
WordPress
WP-Cron
If you have a large website that you like to export, use WP-CRON and make sure it’s available in your hosting environment.
How to fix
If not, get in contact with your hosting provider to activate it.
Check if WordPress can make requests to itself
If WordPress can’t make requests to itself, you can’t export your website with Simply Static. This happens if the public URL of your website is different from the one used for your WordPress admin area. There are a couple of hosting providers like Siteground and WPEngine that are using this setup to provide better security.
By using WordPress as a static site generator you don’t need any special hosting providers for your WordPress website at all, as your visitors will never touch it and only interact with your static website.
This problem can also happen if you use an IP instead of a fully qualified domain for your WordPress website.
How to fix
There is a filter implemented in Simply Static to change the URL that is used to check remote requests. You will use that to change the URL to the public URL of your website like so:
You can add this to the functions.php of your child theme or use the Code Snippets plugin to add it.
Rest API and XML-RPC
Simply Static doesn’t rely on XML-RPC but if you also deactivated the default WordPress Rest API Simply Static will have a hard time starting a static export from within the UI. The export runs with an Ajax request (like saving posts) – if there is something wrong here, you will most likely get a lot of issues within your WordPress admin area.
How to fix
This can be caused by a lot of things. I would recommend deactivating all other plugins and trying another static export. If successfully, activate them one by one to find the plugin causing the issue. Also, have a look at your wp-config.php – maybe you deactivated it here?
PHP
The issue can also be related to PHP. There aren’t too many requirements to use Simply Static, but you should make sure that you are at least using PHP 7.2.5 or higher, have the cURL extension activated, and that the PHP-XML package is installed if you like to use the XML Parser (for XML-Sitemaps for example).
How to fix
If there is something missing, get in contact with your hosting provider and let them activate it.