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I’m excited to announce the launch of our 2.0 version for Simply Static Pro.
4 years, 88 releases
Simply Static Pro 1.0 was released over four years ago (June 2021) – it’s our 88th release of Simply Static Pro now!
Time flies, and we have been on a journey to make Static WordPress easy and approachable for everyone, while never losing touch with our developer community – I’m so proud of that!
We are still quirky, small, independent, and never get tired of getting the maximum out of our product(s).
2.0 is a significant milestone for us – while it doesn’t introduce that many big features, it includes a lot of polish for existing ones – making things easier, smarter, and nicer.
Features
Let’s get started, and I’ll show you some of the cool new features we’ve built into version 2.0.
I’m currently traveling around the world, so I don’t have a proper recording setup with me, and the sound quality isn’t as good as you are used to. Once I’m back, we’ll record some proper walkthrough videos!
Smarter 404 Updates
Updating your 404 page for your static site is now easier than ever – a dedicated export task and the ability to define a custom 404 page are part of the new release.
Form Validation
Most of our integrated form plugins need AJAX (server-side requests) to handle the validation.
This was pretty frustrating for many of our users, so we sat down and built our very own validator library that works across all our form integrations.
It’s smart, it’s subtle, and it brings the much-needed validation to your static site without relying on server-side processing:
Better Search
Our old search UI was limited and too complex to style.
We streamlined ot now and added options for a submit button and the ability to customise the submit button and input placeholder.
We also streamlined the design output between Fuse.js and Algolia now, so it looks and feels the same (with less opinionated design).
However, that’s only half the story – we’ve introduced a fully static-compatible search page.
We leverage your WordPress search page but replace it with our own, statically optimized search form.
That’s right, this also supports direct linking to searches now.
Nicer Single Export UI
It never felt right to have this clunky metabox just for the Single Export – we have now refined that and added it directly where it has to be – in the toolbar (Block Editor), next to the Publish button (Classic Editor), and inside Elementor:
Customizable Workflow
Our users have diverse needs when it comes to their workflow.
Small bloggers want everything to be automated with a single click, while our enterprise users want more approval steps in between; it was impossible to find common ground for everyone.
That’s why we are introducing a new settings page called Workflow now, and giving you complete control over how Simply Static should behave on your website:
This also introduced a new webhook option, allowing you to easily notify tools like Slack, Discord, or Zapier once an export has occurred.
UAM
We developed a new integration called UAM (User Access Management), giving you granular control over all of our features – restrict settings pages, menu items, and even entire features and integrations with our new UAM integration:
The future
We still have an almost endless number of feature requests across all our products, and that’s what keeps me excited!
Simply Static will be here, even when all our competitors have given up – strong, open source, and with a touch of developer humor.
We are already working on a significant overhaul for our Simply Static Studio platform, but rest assured that we continue to push improvements and new features throughout our entire product pipeline!
Have a great week,
Patrick
