Make Me Static, Static Site Generator, Git, Pages and Live Stats vs UpdraftPlus

Welcome to the Make Me Static Plugin for WordPress. This plugin is a static site generator and aims to create and maintain a static copy of your WordPress website within a Git repository. This version includes automatic access to a free Git solution and Page provider platform. (so no setup or credentials are necessary) Alternatively the static site can be generated and stored in a GitLab Git Repository that can be used as a source for a static page platform such as CloudFlare Pages. The plugin provides customised sitemap and change tracking which connects to an external crawling service which does all the heavy lifting. We have made great efforts in this version to minimise the configuration required to get going, if you have any problems (with anything) please let is know and we’ll do our best to help. Check out this YouTube video for an introduction to static front-ends and a walk-through of converting a pre-existing WordPress site into a WordPress site with a static front-end. How the service works The plugin connects to a directory service on the Internet at one of the directory URL’s listed below. This in turn will point the plugin to a ‘crawler’ that has been allocated to your site. When you ask the plugin to make a static copy of your site, it will instruct the crawler to visit all the pages on your site to determine which have changed since it’s last visit. Any changed pages will be copied to a Git repository, which in turn can publish pages directly to a page hosting service. The default option is to use a Git account hosted by MadPenguin, and to publish the site on MadPenguin’s page hosting platform. As a result the default options do not require any specific Git or Page hosting configuration to get going. If on the other hand you choose to use a hosted Git service such as GitLab, you will need to enter some credentials for your online account, and from there configure your GitLab account to publish to a page hosting service. Once you have successfully published a static copy of your site, all you need to do is point your domain at the address of the page hosting service, and asssuming your domain matches the one you entered when setting up your profile within the plugin, you should be up and running. The service retains a metadata database for the site which includes file names, sizes and modification times, together with any credentials that have been added when creating a profile. (Sensitive credentials and other information is encrypted at rest). The external service is responsible for all scanning and processing activities to mitigate strain on the WordPress server. The only private data transferred to the external service is the information you enter when creating a profile. All other information is obtained via an anonymous external scan, hence publically available. If you have selected the default Git option, then the service will also retain a static copy of the site. Useful references The service product page Terms and Conditions of Service Privacy Policy Getting Started Service Status Support Forum Make me static directory service URL’s; https://mms-directory-1.madpenguin.uk https://mms-directory-2.madpenguin.uk https://mms-directory-3.madpenguin.uk Other URL’s used to load code; https://assets.makemestatic.com, source for stage-2 crawler UI https://status.makemestatic.com, endpoints that indicate the currently deployed version of a site https://weblogs.makemestatic.com, source for dynamically loaded weblogs data / websockets https://mms-crawler-*.madpenguin.uk, location of the actual crawlers (via websocket) Note that this in an integrated solution, the 3rd party crawling service is owned and operated by the plugin authors on a combination of cloud hosted and on premesis equipment. Live Web Statistics (experimental) If you opt to use the integrated Pages platform, this also provides a live WebStats option that uses the following URL; https://weblogs.makemestatic.com This allows live webstats to be seamlessly delivered into your control panel and updated in real-time via a websocket connection. Do not use this URL directly! This URL is only referenced once you click on the webstats icon next to your profile. How Does it work? The WordPress site is scanned by the MMS service under direction from the WordPress plugin. This off-loads the scanning process to specialised software which aims to minimise the loading on the WordPress server while scans are in progress. There are three types of scan that can be performed; An “update”, which literally only looks at entries with changed sitemap timestamps (this is very quick and great for typo’s and any changes that only affect a single page) A “synchronise”, typically this will scan every asset on the WordPress site and compare a checksum of each asset against it’s database to see if it’s changed since the last scan. Any changes are then transferred to the connected Git repository. A “Git verification”, this is like a “synchronise”, but also scans the Git repository for assets that are no longer referenced by the site (and removes them). As the site is scanned “from the outside” there should be no risk of the plugins actions exposing any data that isn’t already public. By the same token the external service has no ability to modify WordPress so the security footprint of the plugin is tiny. Feature bullet points The plugin provides a way to produce a static copy of your website in a git repository The result is compatible with both Github pages and CloudFlare pages for automatic publication Multiple profiles are supported for (A+B_…) testing Various scan rates are supported from one page per 5s to 7 cores flat out Scheduled updates are supported and automated scanning Currently “Gitlab” is supported with plans for GitHub and on-prem Gitlab Support push services (WebPushr) to automatically notify subscribers on scan completion Issue tracker for each profile to diagnose problems Handles current and historical issues Ability to acknowlede or delete issues when resolved GUI access to the internal asset database Search as you type filtering Pinning (force assets to be scanned regardless of perceived change) Selective / manual queueing of assets for testing Ability to include manual / static assets in the scan (in the WP tree but unmanaged by WP) Ability to exclude specific files and folders Setup Wizard is included for a guided profile creation The Technology The Plugin presents as a WordPress Admin / plugin page Backend connections are made over websockets using PKI The crawler respects Robots.txt, (make sure the “MMSbot” agent is allowed on your site) MMS Javascript runs in an isolated module and CSS “plays nice” with WordPress Global CSS and theming is partitioned and user editable (if you feel the need …) All of the front-end JS code and PHP is either GPL2 or MIT licensed Backend-code is all based on the Orbit Framework (the framework and DB are all MIT licensed) Orbit is a ‘real time’ framework, so the admin panel is 100% reactive. Progress bar updates are typically “per percent” granularity All statuses, totals, etc, are updated as they happen Unless you’ve hit a bug, there is no mileage in reloading the MMS plugin page If you change your license information, it will change in real-time If the crawler allocated to your site changes (perhaps due to a license upgrade) then the appropriate version of the crawler UI will be uploaded “into” the page from the new crawler.

The UpdraftPlus Backup & Migration Plugin is trusted by the WordPress community to backup, restore and migrate their WordPress websites. UpdraftPlus is actively installed on more than 3 million websites around the world. Backup with UpdraftPlus UpdraftPlus is the world’s highest ranking and most popular scheduled backup and migration plugin. Backup to your preferred storage location and restore in just three clicks. Backup to Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3 (or compatible), Rackspace Cloud, FTP, DreamObjects, Openstack Swift or email. The paid version also allows you to backup to Microsoft OneDrive, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Backblaze B2, SFTP, SCP, pCloud, WebDAV or UpdraftVault, our integrated storage option for UpdraftPlus. Backup manually or schedule to run every 2, 4, 8 or 12 hours, daily, weekly, monthly or fortnightly. Restore with UpdraftPlus Your WordPress website is vulnerable. Your site may get hacked. Something could go wrong with an update or your server could crash. You might need to reverse a change made or a mistake caused by human error. Whatever the reason, you can restore your WordPress website in just a few clicks with UpdraftPlus. Choose which components to restore (e.g. plugins, themes, database etc.), click again to restore, then click again to return to the main screen. Migrate with UpdraftPlus It’s easy to migrate your WordPress website to another web host, server or domain with this free version of UpdraftPlus. To migrate, simply download your database, plugins, themes etc. from the source site, then upload them into your destination site. When migrating, a built-in search-and-replace engine identifies old strings and replaces these to reflect the new location. UpdraftPlus saves you time and reduces the risk of broken links or missing files associated with manual migrations. Why UpdraftPlus? Writing a reliable backup and migration plugin that ‘just works’ consistently across millions of different WordPress deployments is hard. UpdraftPlus is relied upon to do exactly that. We’re trusted and actively deployed on more websites around the world than any other WordPress backup and migration plugin. UpdraftPlus: Backs up, migrates and restores Offers a huge number of remote storage locations Allows you to schedule backups, so you can ‘set and forget’ Is comprehensive and easy to use Is proven to work on over 3 million sites. UpdraftPlus Premium The free version of UpdraftPlus will back up and migrate your website perfectly well. However if you need more features and options you can purchase our Premium version. Backup and Migrate with UpdraftPlus Premium, and: Get automatic backups before updates. Restore the very latest version if a WordPress or plugin update breaks your site. Backup Incrementally. 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Backup non-WP files and databases e.g. tables belonging to your e-commerce store or customisations to WordPress core. Get database encryption. Manage your backups and migrations from the WP-CLI. Get Premium Support. Find out more on our comparison page. UpdraftPlus Premium is available for purchase here. Managing multiple websites? UpdraftCentral is a powerful remote control dashboard for WordPress that allows you to manage your backups, as well as updates, users, pages, posts, plugins and themes from one central location. Choose between: UpdraftCentral (free, self-hosted) UpdraftCentral Premium (paid-for, self-hosted) UpdraftCentral Cloud (paid-for, fully-hosted) Optimize your sites centrally by combining the power of WP-Optimize and UpdraftCentral or manage your backups centrally by combining the power of UpdraftPlus with UpdraftCentral. Need to create a temporary clone of your site? UpdraftClone makes it quick and easy to create a temporary sandbox for changes you want to try out. Simply select the versions of WordPress and PHP that you want, and we’ll do the rest. More about UpdraftClone The full suite of plugins from Team Updraft and friends UpdraftPlus. Backup, migrate and restore. Rated 5* on the plugin directory and trusted by more than 3 million WordPress website owner WP-Optimize. Clean the database, compress images and caching. Optimize your WordPress website. 5* user rating. 1 million + active installs. All-In-One Security (AIOS). Secure your WordPress website. Comprehensive, feature rich and easy to use. 5* user rating and 1 million + active installs. WP Overnight. Quality Extensions for your WooCommerce store. 5* rated invoicing, order and product management, customer management solutions and more. Easy Updates Manager. Take control of updates. Lots of features for free, and a Premium version with even more – over 300,000 users. Internal Link Juicer.Boost your SEO. Automate internal links within your WordPress website. Save time and rank higher in the search engines. For other useful, free plugins see our lead developer’s profile, here. Are you multilingual? Can you translate? Do you want to help people that speak your language to backup, migrate and restore their WordPress websites? The UpdraftPlus backup, migration and restoration plugin is ready and waiting. The translation process is easy, and web-based – please go here for instructions: https://updraftplus.com/translate/. Or, if you’re already an expert WordPress translator, just pick out the .pot file from the wp-content/plugins/updraftplus/languages/ directory – if you scan for translatable strings manually, then you need to get these functions: _x(), __(), _e(), _ex(), log_e(). Many thanks to our existing translators. License Copyright 2011-24 David Anderson This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA Non-English translators are provided by volunteers, and wordpress.org does not give plugin developers control over their translations; thus relying on them is at your own risk; UpdraftPlus cannot guarantee that translations from the original English are accurate. We recognise and thank those mentioned at https://updraftplus.com/acknowledgements/ for code and/or libraries used and/or modified under the terms of their open source licences.