A designers first dive into using WordPress to create static websites.

1. WORDPRESS
TO STATIC SITE
@liamdempsey
My First Dive Into
A DESIGNER’S LEAP INTO SOMETHING NEW

2. WHAT’S THE STORY?
• Looking for options for clients who need a
great site, but don’t want a blog
• Eager to reduce hosting and maintenance
costs for sites that don’t update often
• This trend is happening, so better explore it
• Hosting for active WordPress-to-static sites
is expensive
@liamdempsey

3. CLIFF JUMPING
• Decided to dig into WordPress-to-
static sites one week ago
• Spent 4 hours building and
outputting first static site
• Knowledge is a work in progress
@liamdempsey

4. THE PROCESS
CLEAN UP
WORDPRESS
STUFF
INSTALL
STATIC SITE
PLUGIN
CONFIGURE
STATIC SITE
PLUGIN
EXPORT
STATIC SITE
UPLOAD
STATIC SITE
TO SERVER
BUILD
WORDPRESS
SITE
@liamdempsey

5. WORDPRESS TOOLS
• Astra Mini Agency Bundle $152; $135 year
• Elementor Pro $199; $149 year
• Yoast SEO FREE
@liamdempsey

6. WORDPRESS TOOLS

7. STATIC SITE PLUGINS
• Simply Static
• WP2Static
@liamdempsey

8. HANDLING FORMS
• HubSpot
• Mailchimp subscription forms
• Typeform
• Others
@liamdempsey

9. PRE-EXPORT TASKS
• Get rid of extra themes and plugins
• Delete unnecessary uploads
• Update exclude settings to prevent
export of feed, comments, .DS_Store
files on Mac, etc.
@liamdempsey

10. HANDLING 404
• Create a 404 page in WordPress
• Use .htaccess to declare the location
of the 404 file on the server
ErrorDocument 404 /404/index.html
@liamdempsey

11. HOSTING
• Currently hosted on BlueHost
• Playing around with Amazon Lightsail
• Might look at GitHub Pages
@liamdempsey

12. BIG SHOUT OF THANKS

13. STILL LEARNING
• Exporting single static pages
• The best way to clear demo content
before exporting to static
• Exploring hosting solutions
@liamdempsey

14. QUESTIONS?
@liamdempsey
liam@lbdesign.tv