The future of Simply Static

As some of you may have noticed, in December 2020, I adopted Simply Static from Scott Blaine.

I used the pluginA piece of software that adds specific features to WordPress. myself several times in the context of some enterprise projects. After fixing it for my own purposes (updating dependencies and making smaller modifications), I thought about contacting Scott to take over the development.

Short about myself

I’m Patrick. I’ve been a WordPress Developer since 2010. I’ve been developing WordPress plugins full-time for almost my entire career. Currently, I’m a full-time developer at MarketPress, which you may know from products like German Market and B2B Market.

That will change in February 2021, when I’m switching back to being a full-time freelancer and trying to bring in more time to develop and maintain my plugins.

In my free time, I develop and maintain several plugins on wordpress.org which you can check out on my profile here. Some of them have a pro version others are entirely free to use.

The near future

I will take the beginning of the year to do a bit of housekeeping for Simply Static: updating dependencies, handling the management via Composer, and introducing many hooks that you can use to extend it.

I’m also writing documentation and several tutorials to show you different use cases, benefits, and more from static website generators.

Support

The project will be developed on GitHubA web-based platform for version control and collaboration, allowing multiple people to work on projects at once.. You can find the repositoryIn version control systems like GitHub, a repository is the most basic element, a folder where all the files for a parti… here: https://github.com/patrickposner/simply-static

Feel free to add issues and do pull requests – I try to catch up!

The other support channel will be the support forum from wordpress.org here: https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/simply-static/

I try to answer everyone, but as I’m a solo developer and do that mostly in my free time, I don’t expect immediate answers and fixes to all your reports.

You can email me at support@admin.simplystatic.com, but I can’t guarantee a timely answer.

Monetization

I will monetize Simply Static. That means there will be a pro version that enhances Simply Static with additional features, all features included in Simply Static now will remain free forever.

That also does not mean that the free version will not have new features, bug fixes, or improvements.

There will be only one pro version, which you can install in addition to Simply Static to enhance the feature set. I’m not a fan of paid add-ons for every feature, but I can assure you it will be fair.

Roadmap

While I have not decided which features will be included in the free or pro version of Simply Static, I made a little roadmap for its upcoming features.

Some will be quite experimental, and others will be more established. I like to maintain the current community but also bring some fresh air from a headless development perspective to Simply Static.

Selection

It will be possible to do selective static generations. This includes creating sets of pages, posts, and so on and exporting them, as well as automatically triggering an exportThe process of saving the files and data from your WordPress site to create a static site. when updating content.

This ensures a faster generation time and remains a consistent workflowIn a software development context, a workflow is a set of processes and tools for automating the deployment and operatio… for you without the necessity to do a full and maybe time-consuming complete generation process.

Queues

I will introduce an interface to plan and execute timed generations in Simply Static.
You can set intervals and dates to automatically refresh and deploy a new static version of your website.

Deployment

I’m enhancing the wp-background-processing abstraction class to make it easier to handle automatic deployments to external services. I will also build ready-to-use integrations to popular services like Amazon S3, Digital Ocean SpacesA scalable and secure object storage service that works similarly to Amazon AWS S3., CloudflareA company that provides services like security and website speed improvement. It acts as a protective layer between the … Worker, and NetlifyA platform for automating web projects that provides hosting and serverless backend services for web applications and st… to make it easier for you to automate the entire process.

WPML and Multisite

I’m developing a solution to use Simply Static in a multisite context to export subsites to different directories (or deploy them to different storage solutions) and export static versions per language via WPML.

Forms

I plan to integrate two form plugins for Simply Static: Gravity Forms and Contact Form 7. This part will be handled with JavaScriptA programming language used in web development to create interactive elements on a webpage. (React) and requires the WordPress Rest APIRepresentational State Transfer Application Programming Interface. A set of rules for building web services, allowing di… to be activated.

Search

I’m developing a headless search solution for Simply Static. This will not require external services like Agolia; instead, it will use the WordPress Rest API to perform the search with an asynchronous request, display the results, and redirect the user to the correct static version of the page.

Comments

Similar to forms and search integrationThe act of combining different systems, software, or functionalities to work together as a unified whole., there will be a headless solution for comments in Simply Static.

The Community

I’d like to write some words about this awesome community. I’m really impressed with how well the feedback was just the moment after I published the first update to Simply Static.
You are awesome people and talented developers. I’m really happy to see things evolving, to meet new people like you, and to work together to make static website generation a solid way of running a WordPress website.

Special thanks to Leon Stafford and Avinash Dalvi, who motivated me to write those lines and immediately offered their help!

All the best, and have a nice start in 2021,

Patrick