This article should provide you with some additional information regarding my talk on WordCamp Europe Athen 2023.
You can also download the slides from my presentation here.
As this is a lighting talk, there is not enough time to cover every aspect of using WordPress as a static site generator, but thankfully I spent the last months covering many of the mentioned topics in detail within my tutorials.
How to use Simply Static
The first step mentioned is installing, activating, and using Simply Static. There isn’t really a better space than the intensive documentation to get started: Documentation
Where to host
In my talk, I mentioned several options to host your static website. I covered most of them within a tutorial, so feel free to learn more here:
How to use forms
Using forms on a static site might seem tricky at first, but there are several tools, plugins, and services out there to make it simple. I covered Contact Form 7 and Zapier in my talk, but there are a lot of alternatives available:
- 8 Tools to use forms on your static website
- Static Forms with IFTTT
- Static Forms with Zapier
- Static Forms with iFrames (Elementor Forms)
How to use search
Different ways to integrate a working search solution into your static WordPress website exist. In my talk, I covered Google Custom Search Engine as one of the simplest examples, but if you need something more customizable or powerful, check out the following tutorials:
- How to use Google CSE on your static site
- 5 Tools to use search on your static website
- How to use Algolia on your static website
- Set up the search with Fuse.js
Should I use static WordPress?
I mentioned a couple of benefits of using WordPress as a static site generator, but the first question is: Is it the right way for me? I collected a couple of tutorials that answer the question: