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daitangio

I like static site generators, but on my Wordpress Blog I can

1. Got comments and pingback with Antispam

2. Install a nice (Elastic) Search plugin with a decent search engine (name your preferred option).

3. HotSwap on the fly themes

4. Improve performance via cache plugins (there are a lot of them).

I do not run JetPack to avoid even Wordpress.com lockin. Also with PHP 8.x and code cache enabled the overall WordPress speed is very high.

So how can I get all this feature on static site generators without lockin for comments/search/moderation (just asking)?

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You also get to defend the Wordpress site against hackers. Regular updates being managed for core. Plug-ins and Themes that introduce security holes. Extra server load when baddies target your sites api.

Static sites have been my goto for years. Especially after Netlify launched and a free tier became available.

Now cloudflare pages offers free hosting with basically unlimited hosting for personal sites.

I couldn’t go back to wasting time managing a personal site with Wordpress.

WordPress has automatic updating of plugins now. It's almost completely solved the problem.

If your website/blog is primarily a website/blog I think Wordpress is a perfectly fine choice (maybe overkill for personal use, solid for teams of authors). For me the problem starts once one wants to start adding more web application like features to it. Obviously you can build everything on top of it, but you pretty much need specialized developers. WP development is just too foreign and unattractive for most fullstack developers I know. Also its database model can be a pain to deal with.

Don't know what the best solution is. I'm currently testing Strapi CMS on the backend with a NextJS frontend which should give me hybrid between pre-rendered/ssr as well as dynamic parts while having a consistent development experience across all of them that is very familiar to developers. Definitely not as quick to launch experience as slapping together landing pages in website builders and Wordpress with pre-made templates, but I'll see how it goes.

From the comments I’m learning the obvious. There isn’t one approach because there isn’t one problem.

This was a success because I really understood what I was solving for.

Each scenario will change and the solution will too.

TLDR of the article; what do you want?

Algolia for search.

Disqus for comments. Are pingbacks really a thing still?

Do you really hotswap themes that frequently?

You get performance out of the box with SSG that would be a lot of effort to replicate with Wordpress.

If you're going through the trouble of self-hosting something, why would you then outsource commenting to a company that sells your visitors data? Half the point of running your own platform is to get away from the nexus of dark patterns that have taken over the modern web, otherwise you might as well ditch Wordpress and run your blog on Facebook.

Any site that uses Disqus is a no-go for me.

From their privacy policy:

> Disqus uses, and also engages third party ad partners and affiliates who use cookie IDs, device IDs (including mobile), hashed email addresses, IP address, ISP and browser information, demographic or interest data, content viewed and actions taken on the Service or Partner Sites, including information about the websites you’ve viewed and advertisements you’ve interacted within order to provide you with more relevant advertising targeted to your preferences and interests derived from your interaction with the Service, Partner Sites or other third party websites.

> We may sell or share your personal data with the parties set out below for the purposes set out in the table in paragraph 5 above.

You probably can't and I guess that's ok. I didn't need those features for the project.

1. Got comments and pingback with Antispam There are plenty of free/paid, SaaS, self-hosted comment systems to choose from.

2. Install a nice (Elastic) Search plugin with a decent search engine (name your preferred option). Same as above, for most blogs something like http://elasticlunr.com/ can get the job done really well.

3. HotSwap on the fly themes Most static site generators support this.

4. Improve performance via cache plugins (there are a lot of them). The point of static sites is you don't really need to cache data. It's already generated ahead of time. You're just serving the content.

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