Table of Contents
It’s summer here in Europe, which usually means everything is slowing down, and people are starting their vacations.
While we enjoy a good vacation and some team members are happy on their holidays, we weren’t standing still – so here is our little summer update for Studio!
Dashboard Updates
We polished our dashboard quite a lot over the past few weeks – here is the TLDR:
- 35% faster dashboard by smart refactors
- update static sites right from the dashboard
- a new upload-first approach for creating sites
- clear your static site cache right from the dashboard
- new statistics feature (bandwidth, cache hit rate, average response time)
Let’s get into the details for each of the things mentioned:
Static WordPress that just works, with Static Studio.
Faster dashboard
Our dashboard is built on vanilla React, and while it’s cleaner, it also comes with its own challenges.
However, moving some of our heavier functions to the edge and improving our code to rely more on asynchronous functions rather than waiting for responses has made it much more snappier.
Update Static Sites
You can now update your static site right from the action bar of your project:
This is the beginning of a bigger feature implementation, where we will allow you to use different kinds of export types (full export, update, builds) and schedule them (fixed date or repeatedly).
Upload-First approach for creating sites
Let’s face it: people coming to Simply Static Studio aren’t new to WordPress and aren’t here to create a new site from scratch – they want their existing website static as fast as possible.
We are all into making things easier. You can still create blank sites, but our migration flow is now much more prominent:
Clear Static Site Cache
We automatically clear our CDN cache after each export. Still, sometimes you need that button for your peace of mind – I get that.
Years of being conditioned to click “Clear Cache” after the slightest change in your WordPress installation won’t go away overnight.
There you go, a quick and easy way to manually clear the CDN cache for your site:
The new statistics overview
Some of you asked about some basic statistics inside the dashboard to better understand bandwidth usage, caching, and response time, and we delivered.
An additional icon is now in the Static Site column. Click on it, and you get some statistics for the last 30 days:
Here is how the statistics look for our little demo site:
We also wrote a documentation article to explain better what each value means: docs.simplystatic.com/article/152-statistics
Migration Updates
Alongside our dashboard, migration is still one of our main focus areas.
Improvements:
- Migrations now need way less memory
- We improved the performance of migrations by 25%
- Migrations can now be paused and resumed (even after uploading the ZIP file)
- We auto-detect and deactivate problematic plugins now, and show you a dashboard notice in the “Plugins” screen with an explanation
- We auto-detect and remove old caching setups now
- Auto-skip for remaining backup files
As you can see, we still heavily iterate on our migration tool to cover all the edge cases and ensure smooth onboarding.
What’s next?
We have one big feature on our agenda that we will tackle next: a custom migrator plugin.
While we have already improved the support for different backup formats that can be uploaded in the dashboard (Hello LocalWP and BackWPup!), we noticed that it’s still a big hurdle for many users.
That problem stems from two things:
Backup Plugins:
The market for backup plugins is huge, but so is the difference in quality. Some invented proprietary formats, some won’t run on less powerful servers, and some do everything they can to upsell users.
Our customers shouldn’t have to learn a new tool to move their sites over.
Shared Hosting:
Many people don’t switch from a premium managed server or their own VPN – they host on shared hosting with minimal resources. Often, the server provider does not even handle backups, or it’s an additional paid service.
Onboarding for these customers is way too painful, and we often end up doing the migration (for free) for them.
While I like offering this level of service, it often also causes problems because of time zones.
We work in shifts, covering multiple time zones, but if one team member starts handling a migration and it hasn’t finished, it’s not easy for the next team member to continue it, so migrations sometimes take too much time.
We can improve on it as a team (and we will), but we also want people to do it without us stepping in – that’s why we invest in our own, low-touch migration plugin.
That’s a wrap, folks.
I hope you enjoy some nice weather wherever you live and enjoyed our status update!
Patrick
Static WordPress that just works, with Static Studio.
