
Show HN: HardyPress, zero-maintenance, “static” Wordpress hosting service - steffoz
https://www.hardypress.com/
======
steffoz
There are lots of WordPress maintenance services [1] out there, but they're
quite expensive. We remove the maintenance/upgrade problem altogether
staticizing your WordPress sites and putting them on a CDN. The real WordPress
installation lives on a separate domain and only runs when an editor needs to
make some changes to the content. And it's totally seamless for visitors and
your editors.

[1]: [https://underconstructionpage.com/wordpress-maintenance-
serv...](https://underconstructionpage.com/wordpress-maintenance-services/)

~~~
seanwilson
Brilliant idea. I'm really surprised there aren't more services like this as
it seems such a logical idea that the admin/editor functionality of your site
should be completely locked down and separate to the site serving the content.
When making static sites, I've been looking for something with the flexibility
of WordPress but there really isn't much out there. Good luck!

Do you allow custom plugins and templates? For the static generation part, how
do you stop sites being too big or computationally expensive to generate?

~~~
steffoz
Thanks! As long as plugins don't have any front-facing dynamic components,
you're good to go! Templates are freely editable just like regular hosting
services. For the static generation, it's really fast also for medium-sized
Worpress sites. We are also trying make the process differential (partially,
at least) :)

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patrickfl
fascinating - can you still use the backend wp-admin? I've experimented with
generating static HTML files with WordPress in the past, but the code has
always came out a tad sloppy. This looks really cool, I might be interested in
a trial.

edit: nevermind, found this:

[https://www.hardypress.com/how-it-works/](https://www.hardypress.com/how-it-
works/)

again, really fascinating. has it been shown to reduce load times? Can I still
minify my own CSS and JS, and "combine external resources?"

is their a public facing demo available?

~~~
zener79
Hi Patrick, I just saw you comment :-)

You can try the service for free, all you have to to is signup here:
[https://app.hardypress.com/register](https://app.hardypress.com/register)

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spleenteo
I wonder if it could really work as advertized... how many problems could be
found making a static website, even on a medium size WP? And what about
dynamic content such as comments, search, filters or other specific plugins?

~~~
steffoz
That's an great question. Most WordPress websites are just "brochure
websites": they don't expose anything dynamic to their visitors excluding
comments, contact forms and search functionality. We already handle these
scenarios out-of-the box. Also, every plugin you use that does not have any
front-facing components, it's perfectly fine. It's not a hosting solution for
every possible WordPress website out there, but it can handle a huge slice of
the market, with big benefits for agencies/freelances.

------
stephenr
Having supported (from an infra/ops point of view) several places that
insisted on using Wordpress, I don't understand why Varnish in front of
<choose your web server[1]> isn't the standard 'recommended' way of hosting
it.

1: it isn't going to matter. When the WP PHP is doing 30 different SQL queries
just to load the front page of the site, your web server is no longer the
bottleneck, even if it's Pre-Fork Apache with mod_php.

~~~
zener79
Using Varnishis a huge boost in performance for sure, but it doesn't solve
vulnerability and maintenance problems

~~~
stephenr
While a 'static' export of the site does solve the vulnerability issue
(assuming it is a static export, and not just exporting to something else
which could be vulnerable), I imagine lots of organisations would choose not
to use it, specifically because some dynamic functionality won't work then.

For those who aren't able/willing to use a fully static version of the site,
Varnish (or Apache Traffic Server, Squid, or Apache or Nginx's Cache mode) can
provide a huge improvement in performance, and (definitely with Varnish and a
custom VCL, possibly not as easy with others) can even handle stuff like grace
mode (i.e. return cached, expired results if the origin is offline) and
purging cached objects when they're updated in the WP DB (via a plugin which
communicates with Varnish).

Im not sure what you mean about maintenance problems?

~~~
zener79
As Steffoz said below:

"Most WordPress websites are just "brochure websites": they don't expose
anything dynamic to their visitors excluding comments, contact forms and
search functionality. We already handle these scenarios out-of-the box. Also,
every plugin you use that does not have any front-facing components, it's
perfectly fine. It's not a hosting solution for every possible WordPress
website out there, but it can handle a huge slice of the market, with big
benefits for agencies/freelances."

Maintenance problems are those you have when you need to update your
installation but you can not because the update break stuff around. I had lots
of these :-)

~~~
stephenr
> Most WordPress websites are just "brochure websites"

Thats possible for the overall majority of WP users, it just isn't what I've
seen it used for.

> Maintenance problems are those you have when you need to update your
> installation but you can not because the update break stuff around.

How does this service solve that problem? Or do you mean, it allows you to
_not_ update immediately to patch a vulnerability, because the site is not the
one publicly accessed?

~~~
zener79
> it allows you to not update immediately to patch a vulnerability, because
> the site is not the one publicly accessed?

Exactly. You can never update a vulnerable plugin if you don't want to.

~~~
stephenr
Right. Doesn't this just make your "admin" site the target then?

~~~
zener79
The "admin" lives in a random-generated subdomain, is basic-auth protected and
is alive only for the time needed for the editor to make the changes through
the dashboard. For the rest of the time WordPress simply doesn't exist.

~~~
spleenteo
brilliant

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quickthrower2
This is a great idea. WordPress had a fantastic ecosystem and frankly a hell
of a lot easier to use than Jekyll and friends. But it's security
vulnerabilities are it's downfall do this is a nice solution.

Another cool service you could offer would be a "CloudFlare" type thing over
and existing WP site, where you cache all the content.

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alesordi
Very useful and simple tool!. Good job.

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mat_jack1
Just a curiosity, which CDN are you using?

~~~
steffoz
BunnyCDN [1], they're one of the few CDN with one-click SSL setup and instant
cache purge

[1]: [https://bunnycdn.com/](https://bunnycdn.com/)

