I’m planning to start an information website soon and for the first time I’m looking for a solution other than WordPress. It’s not that I’ve lost faith in the power of WordPress, it’s just that WordPress generates dynamic pages and I’m looking for a solution that will generate static content.
The question arises that why would I need such a solution?
Before I answer that question, I would want to make sure that everyone who is reading this post get to understand the difference between the dynamic content and static content.
Dynamic Content Management Systems
WordPress stores all the information in the database and when a user requests to view a page, it calls the information from the database and then converts in the HTML format, which can be rendered by the browser to make it readable for the visitor. In short, this is how everything works –
Request by User->WordPress calls information from database-> converts in HTML->Browser rendering->Visitor gets to see the page.
Static Content Management Systems
There are CMS’ that generate static content that means they remove the two steps involved in the previous option. As soon as the request by user takes place, browser renders the file and visitor gets to see the page. Like this ->
Request by User->Browser rendering->Visitor gets to see the page.
Now, back to the old point that why would anyone or I need such a solution. One of the biggest negative points of Dynamic CMS’ is that put lot of pressure on servers and that’s the reason why most of the self-hosted blogs fail to enjoy the digg effect. A simple static generated page will always use less server resources and server can handle traffic spikes easily.
What are the workaround as static CMS’ are not so flexible?
The biggest negative of static CMSes is that they are not as flexible as dynamic CMSes and leaves the webmasters in a dilemma if they want to use dynamic or static CMS. Also, if I want to change something uniformly in all the pages, then it’s a pain, as one will have to change every single page that has been previously generated by the system.
However, with the help of caching engines one can achieve similar results from a dynamic CMS too. That’s why most of the experienced webmasters suggest that one should use caching of the pages. WP Super-Cache is a lifesaver and the best page caching plugin for WordPress.
Caching engines create a static page of your dynamic page and when a user requests for the page, they are served with the cached copy and thus reduces the server load. Here are some of the wonderful plugins that help in caching the pages for WordPress :
WP Super Cache is a static caching plugin for WordPress. It generates html files that are served directly by Apache without processing comparatively heavy PHP scripts. By using this plugin you will speed up your WordPress blog significantly.
2. Batcache
Batcache uses Memcached to store and serve rendered pages. It’s not as fast as Donncha’s WP-Super-Cache but it can be used where file-based caching is not practical or not desired.
cos-html-cache is an extremely efficient WordPress page caching plugin designed to make your WordPress site much faster and more responsive. Based on URL rewriting, the plugin will automatically generate real html files for posts when they are loaded for the first time, and automatically renew the html files if their associated posts are modified.
4. Hyper Cache
The cache tries to be as much per format as possible but that has some drawbacks. Specifically, when a page is in cache it is served directly and WordPress is not started. This means that no plugins are activated, so the ones that needs to be called on each request (eg. for statistic) stops to give reliable results.
If the solution is present, then why look out for static CMS?
Even though the option caching is available, its not as light as static content. There are plugins and various other parts in the theme, which don’t get cached and that’s why static content still wins over the dynamic CMSes. However, after doing little bit of research, I’m convinced that no good CMS which generates static content can match the flexibility offered by WordPress. I guess now you all can judge that what will be my decision.
Is there any static cms ?
If yes it will be the best choice as these dynamic cms sites takes too much time to load which sucks n these is risk if user click red cross button befor website load.
Plz let me also know if there any static cms .
I am unable to understand this post. But well some points are useful for me.
Our company is just finishing the process of moving from Fatwire, a very heavy and expensive dynamic CMS (read lots of overhead required) to a static CMS called Big Medium. Big Medium runs on a web server alone. It generates static files from a dynamic version and as was pointed out, you will not beat a flat file system for performance… hands down. Although not free as the open source market (I've worked there a lot too) the license is VERY nominal (<$200) for what you get and the support is top notch.
How about blueskycanvas ?
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Thanks
Ajithkumar