How to Create a Static WordPress Site in 2025

In 2025, when web performance and security are no longer up for debate, switching your WordPress site to a static configuration can bring unprecedented advantages. Here in this blog, you will learn how to create a static WordPress site in 2025.

Static websites serve pre-rendered HTML and CSS files directly from a CDN or edge network, eliminating server-side rendering and database calls to record sub-second load times. With 47% of users anticipating a page load under two seconds, static WordPress sites satisfy contemporary Core Web Vitals requirements and promote increased engagement and SEO ranking.

In addition, eliminating the dynamic PHP layer significantly decreases typical vulnerabilities such as SQL injections and plugin exploits, securing your site against attacks. More than 50% of companies will have embraced JAMstack models by 2025 to enhance security compliance and operational efficiency, highlighting the move towards decoupled and static processes. 

WordPress, responsible for hosting 40% of all websites worldwide, can easily be converted into a static format by the use of plugins or headless workflows, combining CMS comfort with static performance. Regardless of whether you choose a manual export, a headless strategy using Next.js or Gatsby, or use tools such as Simply Static and WP2Static, there is a static workflow for every skill level. 

By adopting static WordPress in 2025, you reduce hosting expenses, ease maintenance, and provide visitors with a lightning-fast experience that shines in a crowded online environment.

What is a Static Website?

A static website is a type of website that has pre-built HTML, CSS, and, in case JavaScript is also used, it contains the JavaScript files along with the HTML and CSS files. These files are usually served by the server as it is built, to your site visitors, without modifying anything.

No runtime code execution or database queries are performed on a static site. Since everything is pre-rendered, the static sites load faster than the dynamic sites, along with more security, as well as contributing to cost savings, in comparison with the dynamic ones.

Key Features

• Pre-rendered assets: Every page is an .html file with its CSS, JS, images, and fonts; no server-side scripting is used.
• Uniform content: All users view the same markup except when you rebuild and deploy. This is stripped of server-side threats such as SQL injection.
• Interactivity on the client-side: Dynamic behaviors (animations, forms) execute completely in the browser, usually through JavaScript or third-party services.
• Simple, low-cost hosting: Serve static files from CDNs (Netlify, GitHub Pages, AWS S3) for little money and manage enormous traffic with built-in caching.

What is a Dynamic Website?

A dynamic website is a site that builds each of the pages of your site after executing the server-side scripts, followed by accessing the databases whenever your site visitor requests a URL. It does not simply deliver a preconstructed HTML file from the disk, just like in the static case.

This runtime assembly makes it possible to personalize content, displaying varying data or layouts depending on user tastes, logged-in status, time of day, or other factors. There are some other popular sites, such as WordPress, which generally deal with dynamic websites.

Whenever you visit a particular page of that site, WordPress automatically runs PHP to retrieve the post content from MySQL. Then it simply renders the final HTML and CSS for your preferred browser.

Key Features

• Runtime Rendering: Pages are generally created based on the request received by every user by the server-side languages such as PHP, Python, or Node.js.
• Database-Driven: Content and assets generally reside inside the databases, such as MySQL, MongoDB, etc., which further allows for on-demand retrieval, filtering, as well as sorting.
• Personalization: The website can change layout and content for every visitor, rendering user-specific suggestions, forms, or dashboards.
• Client-Side Interactivity: JavaScript libraries (React, Vue, AJAX) further modify or augment pages after the initial loading, without complete reloads.

Static vs. Dynamic Website – Brief Overview

How to Create a Static WordPress Site Using 3 Methods

Building a static WordPress site allows your site to load faster since a static site serves prebuilt HTML files instead of generating pages during runtime, like in the case of a dynamic site. By removing PHP and database dependencies, a static setup reduces common attack vectors such as SQL injection or brute-force login attempts.

In this guide, you will learn the three distinct methods — manually exporting the HTML/CSS-based files, using static site generators in WordPress, and using WordPress plugins.

Method 1: Manual HTML & CSS Export

Manual HTML & CSS export allows you to save every WordPress page as a static file by opening it in your browser. Here is a step-by-step guide to perform manual export of your HTML/CSS file.

Step 1: Set Up a Local WordPress Environment

First, simply install LocalWP, XAMPP, or MAMP software on your local machine to run WordPress on your computer. This will help you during development and preview.

Step 2: Design Your Site

Then, select a specified theme or page builder such as Elementor or Gutenberg. Then create your web pages as per your choice or your preferred brand choice. Lastly, simply just preview your static site on different screens of various sizes, such as mobile, desktop, etc, using the Chrome DevTools.

Step 3: Capture Rendered HTML

• Navigate to each of the pages of your site using your browser, then right-click on the View Page Source option.
• Copy the entire <html>…</html> code; this is the complete HTML code for your website.
• Paste the code into a separate HTML file.

Step 4: Download Asset Files

• From the page source, identify all linked CSS, JS, fonts, and image URLs.
• Simply download these links into the respective folders, such as/css/, /js/, and /images/ for CSS, JS, and images links respectively.

Step 5: Adjust Paths in HTML

Edit each HTML file to update absolute URLs to the relative paths, such as href=”/css/style.css“, ensuring that all the assets load correctly while the site reloads.

Step 6: Test Locally

• Serve your folder using a static server (npx server or Python’s http.server).
• Then, verify that all the pages, links, and assets are displaying without causing errors.

Step 7: Deploy to a Static Host

• GitHub Pages: Push your files to a repo’s GitHub Pages branch and enable GitHub Pages in settings.
• Netlify/AWS S3: Drag-and-drop your folder into Netlify or sync to an S3 bucket fronted by CloudFront/Cloudflare for global CDN caching.

Method 2: Headless WordPress + Static-Site Generator

Headless WordPress separates the CMS from the front end by making content available through REST or GraphQL APIs, allowing you to author posts in WordPress yet deliver them somewhere else. Follow the guide below to perform the export.

Step 1: Install the WPGraphQL Plugin in WordPress

• From your dashboard, navigate to Plugins, then Add New.
• Search for WPGraphQL and click on Install.
• Then click on the Activate button. This makes your content available through a GraphQL endpoint at /graphql.

Step 2: Initialize a Next.js Project

npx create-next-app static-wp-site
cd static-wp-site
npm install @apollo/client graphql

Step 3: Fetch Slugs for Static Paths

Inside the pages/[slug].js, use getStaticPaths to query all post slugs and also define the pages that you want to build:

export async function getStaticPaths() {
  const client = new ApolloClient({ uri: 'https://yourwp.com/graphql', cache: new InMemoryCache() });
  const { data } = await client.query({ query: gql`{ posts { nodes { slug } } }` });
  return { paths: data.posts.nodes.map(p => ({ params: { slug: p.slug } })), fallback: false };
}

Step 4: Fetch Content for Each Page

Still in pages/[slug].js, implement getStaticProps to pull title and content for each slug:

export async function getStaticProps({ params }) {
  const client = new ApolloClient({ uri: 'https://yourwp.com/graphql', cache: new InMemoryCache() });
  const { data } = await client.query({ 
    query: gql`query($slug: String!) { postBy(slug: $slug) { title content } }`, 
    variables: { slug: params.slug } 
  });
  return { props: { post: data.postBy } };
}

Step 5: Build & Export Static Files

npm run build
npm run export

Step 6: Automate Deployments

Connect your GitHub repository to Vercel or Netlify so that each push initiates a new build and deploy, keeping your static site in sync with content changes.

Step 7: Deploy to CDN-Powered Host

Vercel and Netlify automatically deploy your /out folder to edge nodes globally, with sub-100 ms TTFB and solid caching.

Method 3: Static Export through WordPress Plugins & Services

In this guide, we are using the Simply Static plugin to demonstrate the process of exporting the WordPress static site.

Step 1: Install & Activate Simply Static

• Navigate to the Plugins section and head to Add New.
• Then, use the search bar to search for the plugin Simply Static, then click Install and Activate Simply Static.

Step 2: Set up Export Settings

• Under Simply Static, head to the Settings section and select Local Directory or you can even link GitHub/FTP/S3.
• Then, set include/exclude rules for pages, posts, as well as assets to customize your export.

Step 3: Create Static Files

• Simply just click on Simply Static and then Generate Static Files.
• The plugin then crawls your entire site, captures a snapshot of each URL, and bundles it into a ZIP or folder.

Step 4: Deploy

• Local Directory: Use FTP/SFTP to upload the exported folder.
• GitHub Pages: Push the contents of the ZIP to your repo’s gh-pages branch.
• Netlify/S3: Drag the folder into Netlify or sync to an S3 bucket for CDN distribution. Simply Static.

Step 5: (Optional) Schedule Exports

Use the WP-Cron integration and the WP-Crontrol to schedule full or single-page exports so that your static site is updated whenever the content changes.

Conclusion

In 2025, rendering your WordPress site into a static configuration guarantees blazing fast performance by delivering pre-rendered HTML, CSS, and JavaScript directly from a CDN, without runtime PHP and database queries for sub-second load times.

Whether you go for a one-click solution with plugins such as Simply Static—used by more than 40,000 active users to create and release static builds— or WP2Static—an open-source classic that exports your site silently to GitHub Pages, Netlify, S3, or any CI/CD pipeline—there’s something for every workflow and skill level.

For developers who want finer control and dynamic content updates in real-time, a headless WordPress setup utilizing Next.js takes advantage of getStaticProps and incremental static regeneration (ISR) to pre-render pages during deploy time, but with on-demand revalidation still enabled for new content.

By eliminating server-side flaws native to dynamic PHP-powered sites, static WordPress significantly minimizes your attack surface, protecting against plugin exploits and SQL injections, and slashes hosting expenses using low-cost object storage or free CDN plans.

Finally, adopting a static WordPress workflow in 2025 combines the best of both worlds: WordPress’s admin UI familiar content management plus the speed, security, and scalability requirements of contemporary web experiences.

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