For as long as we’ve been building WordPress sites, two things have come up again and again with our clients: how fast is it, and how safe is it? WordPress is brilliant for editing, but every page a visitor asks for is assembled on the spot by PHP, a database, a theme and a page builder, and every one of those is something that has to be kept fast, patched and protected.
PressEdge is our answer to that. It’s a static WordPress plugin we’ve built at J36 Digital, and this is the story of why we built it, what it does, and what we’ve learned so far.
The problem we kept coming back to
Most of the sites we look after are brochure sites, blogs, portfolios and local business sites. Their pages change once a week, sometimes once a month. Yet behind every one of them sits a full WordPress install doing the same work for every visitor, all day long, and exposed to the whole internet while it does it.
That has a cost. Caching and a content delivery network help with speed, but WordPress is still there behind them, still reachable and still a target. And it means updates are always urgent. When a security flaw is announced in a popular plugin, every site running it is at risk until it’s patched, so the job jumps straight to the top of the list, whatever else was planned that day.
We wanted to give our customers a better service than that: better security, better speed, less risk of being hacked, and less of that urgency around updates.
What we wanted instead
The idea was simple to say and harder to build. Keep WordPress exactly as it is for editing, so nobody has to learn anything new. But stop putting WordPress in front of visitors. Give them a ready-made copy of each page instead, served from a fast worldwide network, and keep the editing site private.
There were a few things that weren’t negotiable. Most of the sites we build use Elementor, so Elementor forms had to keep working on the live site. Publishing had to happen on its own, because a static site that someone has to remember to rebuild will eventually be out of date. And it had to be plain enough to run on a real client’s site, not just ours.
What PressEdge does, in plain terms
- Edit as normal. You work in WordPress on a private address, with Elementor or whatever builder you already use.
- PressEdge builds. Save a page and it’s turned into a ready-made web page, along with the images, styling and scripts it needs.
- It’s sent to Bunny. Only what changed is uploaded to Bunny.net’s network (affiliate link: we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you), and the old copy is cleared.
- Visitors get the copy. Your domain points at Bunny, so visitors are served the ready-made pages. Forms and comments are still handled by WordPress behind the scenes.
That’s the whole idea. The live site is plain files, with no login page, database or plugins for anyone to attack, and WordPress carries on quietly in the background as the place where you do your editing.
How we built it
PressEdge began life as a fork of the open-source Static Porter plugin, and we’re grateful to its authors for the foundation. Since then most of it has been rewritten. Bunny.net is the one place it publishes to, a set-up wizard creates everything on Bunny for you, and the whole thing is released under the GPLv2, just like WordPress.
We’ve been deliberate about how it grows. It runs on our own sites first, including j36.digital, so every rough edge is one we find before a client does. Every change is checked by an automated test suite before it ships, and features and fixes are going in most days.
The moment it became more than an internal tool
PressEdge started out as something for our own customers. The point it became more than that was when we cracked password-protected pages.
A static site has nothing to check a password against, so normally a protected page simply can’t exist on one. We found a way round that: PressEdge encrypts the page when it’s published, so the live site only ever holds a locked copy, and the right password unlocks it in the visitor’s own browser. Without the password, there’s nothing to read.
That was the moment it stopped feeling like a clever workaround for our own sites and started feeling like a product other people could use.
What we’ve learned along the way
Running PressEdge on real sites has taught us plenty, and a lot of it has turned straight into features.
Forms are the hard part
Getting a form to send from a static page is the easy bit. Keeping it working is harder. Most form plugins include a security code in the page that WordPress stops accepting after about a day, so a form on a page published yesterday can quietly start failing today. PressEdge now fetches a fresh code for the form when an older page is opened, and we test each form plugin with its own scripts in a real browser, including on a page that’s a day old.
Small things show up as broken links
A dead-link report on one of our own sites once listed a dozen 404s. They came from links WordPress hides in every page for feeds, pingbacks and the like, which only work on WordPress itself. PressEdge now strips them out of the published pages.
Change one thing and every page can need rebuilding
When we retired a plugin that had been doing work on our PressEdge sites, we realised the published pages would keep its old output until someone remembered to rebuild. Now PressEdge notices changes like that, and menu, theme and plugin changes too, and rebuilds the whole site on its own.
What it means for our clients
- Safer sites. Visitors browse ready-made files rather than WordPress itself, and the editing site can be locked away from the public.
- Quicker pages. Each page is already built and served from Bunny’s worldwide network, so there’s far less between the click and the content.
- Less urgency around updates. Updates still matter, but a new plugin flaw is no longer a drop-everything moment for the public site.
- Steadier sites. If WordPress is busy, mid-update or briefly unavailable, the live pages carry on being served.
It fits alongside our hosting rather than replacing it. Our WordPress hosting runs on a custom LiteSpeed build with UK-based servers, 100% renewable energy and daily off-site backups. The WordPress editing site still lives there, and PressEdge publishes the static copy out to Bunny.
Who it’s for, and who it isn’t (yet)
PressEdge is a good fit if you run a brochure site, a blog, a portfolio or a local business site, you build with Elementor or another page builder, and you want it fast and hard to attack without changing how you work.
It isn’t the right tool yet if your site depends on a shop, site search or a members area, because those need WordPress to answer each visitor. Bookly bookings already work (apart from its WooCommerce add-on), and WooCommerce is on the roadmap.
What’s next
PressEdge is still young, and it’s changing quickly. We’re putting it on more of our own client sites first and getting it right, rather than rushing a general release. You can see everything it does today, and what’s coming, on the PressEdge website.
Join the PressEdge waitlist
We’re opening PressEdge up soon. If you’d like to be among the first to try it, join the waitlist on the PressEdge website and we’ll be in touch. Got a question, or a site you’d like us to look at? Get in touch and we’ll happily talk it through.
PressEdge FAQs
Why build your own plugin rather than use an existing one?
We started from one. PressEdge began as a fork of the open-source Static Porter plugin, and we’re grateful to its authors. What we needed on top was specific to the sites we look after: Elementor forms that keep working, automatic publishing to Bunny.net, and a set-up a client’s site could run on without anyone babysitting it. That meant rewriting most of it.
Does a static WordPress site mean I never have to update anything?
No. Your WordPress editing site still needs looking after, and forms and comments still go to it. What changes is the urgency. Visitors are browsing plain files rather than WordPress itself, and the editing site can be locked away from the public, so a newly announced plugin flaw is far less of a drop-everything moment.
Will PressEdge work on my site?
If your site is mostly a brochure, a blog, a portfolio or a local business site, it’s very likely a good fit. Shops, site search and members areas need WordPress to answer each visitor, so they aren’t a fit yet. Bookly bookings work fine.
Where can I see everything PressEdge does?
The full feature list, the product tour and the waitlist are all on the PressEdge website.
