For years, Static Studio has been built around a simple idea: your WordPress site should be private, while your static website remains fast, secure, and available to everyone.
Today, we’re taking that idea one step further with a completely new runtime for Static Studio.
Your WordPress editing environment now starts automatically when you need it and shuts down again once you’re done.
While your static website stays online around the clock, WordPress is only running when you’re actively working on your content.
It’s a simpler, more secure way to manage WordPress, and it’s available for all Static Studio sites today.
WordPress Doesn’t Need to Be Online 24/7
We believe WordPress should be treated like an editing application – not a public web server.
Traditional WordPress hosting keeps your website running all the time, even when nobody is editing content. But if you’re publishing a static website, that’s no longer necessary.
Your visitors never interact with WordPress directly. They only access your static site, which is served through our global CDN. WordPress exists purely as your private editing environment.
So why keep it online when you’re not using it?
With our new infrastructure, WordPress automatically starts whenever you want to edit your website. Once you’ve finished making changes and deployed your latest version, it shuts down again—ready for the next editing session.
Your static website remains online at all times, delivering the same speed, reliability, and security your visitors expect.
Why This Matters
Moving to an on-demand WordPress runtime isn’t just a technical improvement; it changes how your website operates behind the scenes.
A Smaller Attack Surface
Security has always been one of the biggest reasons people choose Static Studio.
Your WordPress dashboard is already private and never exposed as a public-facing website. With this update, it also spends most of its time offline.
If WordPress isn’t running, there’s simply less infrastructure available to target.
Combined with static publishing, this creates an even stronger foundation for secure WordPress websites.
Better Resource Usage
Instead of keeping hundreds of WordPress installations running continuously, resources are only used when they’re actually needed.
That allows us to operate a more efficient platform while ensuring your editing environment is ready whenever you need to make changes.
Built for the Future
This new runtime also gives us a much stronger foundation for future improvements.
From faster site provisioning to enterprise deployments and additional infrastructure features, this new architecture allows Static Studio to evolve without changing the simple publishing experience you already know.
More Than Just a New Runtime
Alongside this new architecture, we also improved two important fundamentals: Backups and SFTP.
Backups
Creating backups is now faster and more reliable than ever before.
By default, we still run weekly backups, but you can now switch to daily backups directly from the app.
You can also now download full backups anytime you like and store them separately.
SFTP
Another security-related improvement is how we handle SFTP – it’s still SSH key only, but now it shuts down alongside WordPress as well.
Since SFTP now shuts down together with WordPress, it’s only available while you’re actively working on your site. This significantly reduces its exposure compared to a service that runs continuously.
What Changes for You?
The good news is: almost nothing.
You’ll continue editing WordPress exactly as before – we already migrated everyone to the new setup.
Workflow
The only visible change is that you’ll start your WordPress instance before logging in. Everything else works exactly as before.
Once done, publish your changes, deploy your static site just like before – we automatically shut down WordPress for you afterward – so don’t worry about that.
Forms
Nothing changes here for you, but a lot has changed behind the scenes.
I will write a detailed breakdown, but the short version is: everything works as before, even if you use your own SMTP plugin for the notification – we simply start WordPress, sync the submission, send the email, and shut it down again.
Available Today
This new infrastructure now powers all Static Studio sites (new and existing).
It’s one of the biggest platform upgrades we’ve made since launching Static Studio, and it’s only the beginning. Over the coming months, we’ll continue building on this new foundation with additional improvements that make managing secure static WordPress websites even easier.
What’s next?
This has been our biggest platform project this year – months of preparation, migration, and narrowing down the entire workflow to make it easy to use but incredibly secure at the same time.
For the next few weeks and months, we’re switching our focus back to the static site:
- UI to manage Custom headers for better control
- Firewall management powered by Bunny Shield
- Continued performance and reliability improvements across the platform
As always, if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us!
Have a great week,
Patrick
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