WordPress to Static .html solution

Question

I'm looking for a solution that will enable me to use WordPress for site/content management but will export static .html files rather than dynamic database driven files.

I've used wp-super cache and it is a step in this direction, however, the speed gains were not quite what I'd like.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

Article: 4+1 Ways To Speed Up WordPress With Caching

Article: Speed Up Sites with htaccess Caching

Output Compression

Answer 2

It should be possible to set up wget to spider a Wordpress site into a directory, and publish that directory as a web site. Check out this question of mine for example - I'm sure there are more detailed ones around.

This will eliminate any and all dynamic elements to the site, though, most notably the comments function.

This is a great idea IMO for blogs that don't see new articles too often, and don't need a comments function. It won't get faster than static HTML content.

Answer 3

If you are not seeing the performance improvements you desire with wp-super-cache, then the other caching plugins are not going to help. All of the caching plugins basically do the same thing, they create .html files bypassing the PHP parser.

To improve performance, I would go down the list of best practices found here http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html

The rules that I think are the most important are:

• Use CSS sprites, reducing the multiple http requests will helps
• User mod_expires and mod_deflate Apache modules, this is critical
• Place your script tags after your css link tags
• Use ySlow in Firebug for profiling
• Check your HTML code. If you have several nested tables, the browser has to render the deepest table first, and then build out.
• Minify your CSS and JS. Minify is a great library.

If you chose to not use a caching plugin, make sure you have a PHP opcode cache, like APC. This means that the PHP parse runs only once, and not every request. This can increase your PHP performance by 2X.