Migrate Wordpress to Static HTML

Speed Matters?

Faster speed is known metric for Google particularly for content-focused websites. WordPress and CMS in general score badly on the Lighthouse performance metric with a score of 26% compared to this page on GTMetrix which is 100%.

Save money go serverless?

Static sites do not require an Apache Web Server or PHP. Resources are much lower which is why a static site loads faster. For small to medium traffic static sites the major cloud providers offer hosting for free whereas WordPress.com is a minimum of 50-100 USD per year.

Secure by design?

WordPress is the most popular content management system and is a target for hackers. Version 5 of WordPress has been updated 80+ times since the original release of version 5.0 the majority of the updates are security releases prevent hackers gaining access to a site. Static websites generated off-line are secure by default and cannot be hacked.

How to convert WordPress to static HTML?

There are WordPress plug-ins to create a static site from a WordPress instance. However these require a working WordPress server which is used to generate the static pages. So this is not a true serverless solution.

YouDoCMS supports migration directly from WordPress MySQL database. Jekyll also supports WordPress conversion to markdown. However this does not include categories. Hugo also has a Java tool for exporting WordPress to markdown. However unlike the Jekyll plug-in you do not use WordPress as a headless CMS.

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How to import WordPress into a headless CMS?

YouDoCMS supports direct conversion of WordPress into a static equivalent. On import all existing content is imported as html and the relationships between pages, posts, categories, tags and menus match the originals. A google for  "headless cms migrate Wordpress" does not find any headless CMS supporting direct migration from WordPress.

Updating Content

Traditional static site generators such as Hugo and Jekyll require the user to learn the markdown language and edit using a text editor. For many years WordPress used the familiar TinyMCE HTML editor and this is still one of the most popular plug-ins.  YouDoCMS incorporates the same WordPress classic editor with very similar features.

Cloud Deployment

WordPress users are familiar with updating content which then becomes instantly available on the internet. Switching to the JAMstack with a static site generator will involve manually uploading files to the cloud hosting provider using the command line. YouDoCMS GUI is integrated with the five leading cloud API's for a single click deployment to your host.

SEO and Redirects

By defualt WordPress does not include automatic 301 redirects when the slug to a page or post is updated. To achieve this WordPress users install a redirection plug-in. Similarly for search engine optimisation the most popular WordPress plug-in is Yoast (£99 per year) which provides a search and redirect functionality to improve Google search results. YouDoCMS includes the same functionality (reading score and keyphrase analysis) as Yoast and also imports the Yoast data.

Site Backup

There are a variety of WordPress plug-ins available to backup your WordPress site. Most of these have both free and paid versions. Basic site backup is a feature of all of the plug-ins but generally for a single domain. If you want to manage multiple domains and or clone sites for example UpdraftPlus premium is $84 per year. YouDoCMS incorporates cloning and single click site backup and including images into a single file which can be stored anywhere on the network or a USB drive.

Site Analytics

YouDoCMS includes server log analytics which is linked to your content to provide common metrics such as entry and exit pages, bounce rate, visitor geolocation and search engine crawl monitoring. AWS CloudFront and Azure both offer analysis via the server logs which means you do not need JavaScript tracking. Firebase is reliant upon Google analytics which can be blocked by browser extensions. However if you are an existing Google analytics user then Firebase is the best option. Cloudflare also provides JavaScript analytics (paid). See site analytics.