WordPress is a powerful, dynamic, and popular Content Management System (CMS). However, this means you often need to focus on keeping your site speed high, solid security, and scalability. Running a static site could help with all three aspects, as they are fast, secure, and easy to scale. A tool such as Headless Hostman lets you turn your WordPress website static, while still providing the admin tools to manage your content.
In this review, we’ll look into Headless Hostman. Throughout, we’ll look at what it offers, how much it costs, and a whole host of other aspects of the tool. By the end, you’ll know if it suits the needs of your site.
Introducing Headless Hostman: A (Nearly) ‘White-Glove’ Static WordPress Plugin and Hosting Service
Let’s clear up what static sites are first of all. This is a version of your site where the images and files ‘flatten’ into the page. They don’t call on your database like dynamic sites—in fact, there is no third-party requests at all. On the front end, you won’t see anything different in most cases.
Because your static site uses the database a lot less (if at all), this makes for a faster and more secure website overall:
- You can remove any dynamic element that could interfere with your site’s security, and remove ‘hackable’ weak points.
- Static sites don’t have to load a database and are always available. This leads to rapid loading times in many cases.
- You also get access to the same WordPress dashboard as you usually would. This means you have all of the same tools at your fingertips as usual too.
What’s more, using front-end technologies such as JavaScript and CSS can also help make static sites behave more like dynamic sites to your visitors. Bridging this gap can mean running a static site can almost offer parity to a dynamic one.
As for Headless Hostman, it’s a full-service hosting solution and plugin to create and deploy static WordPress sites.
It lets you reap the benefits of having a static WordPress site without any of the typical setup. In addition, you can use your existing WordPress site, including your current theme and plugins—including your contact form, which is a typically a dynamic element. That’s part of the charm of Headless Hostman.
Dedicated Hosting Environment
Your static site has its own dedicated server instance for hosting. This works a lot like managed hosting or a Virtual Private Server (VPS): you get access to the server resources your site needs, along with scalability leverage. Compare this to traditional shared hosting, where the other sites on the server can impact the quality and performance of your hosting.
100 Percent Uptime
Static hosting is highly redundant, which means it is inherently reliable and available, and performant. This, plus the Cloudflare hosting stack that Headless Hostman runs on, gives you a theoretical 100 percent uptime.
Most hosts strive to offer 99.9 percent uptime. However, even though this is an excellent standard, it still means your site will be offline for almost nine hours per year.
Instant Speed Boost
Static sites load with less complexity, since there’s no need to load a database, and pages don’t need rendering upon request. Because of all this, a static site will almost always outperform a ‘stock’ WordPress installation. This should also give you less to worry about when it comes to your performance during high-traffic periods.
Headless Hostman takes this a step further through integration with Cloudflare’s Content Delivery Network (CDN). The process of loading your media assets and files is almost immediate once you add them to your site. What’s more, your static site maps updates between your dynamic and static site to keep it up to date.
You can also find built-in tools that’ll implement lazy loading, infinite scrolling, preloading for above-the-fold assets, and defer JavaScript from loading. All of these cut down on any server requests and subsequent loading time. If you run a caching plugin such as WP Rocket, you have even greater gains to leverage.
Robust Security
Not having a reliance on a database can also boost your security. Static sites are less vulnerable, due to one less entry point available to malicious users. The same goes for Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, since your site will likely be more resilient to traffic spikes.
Headless Hostman also provides built-in features to block malicious IP addresses, bots, and scrapers to improve performance and ensure your analytics data is accurate.
Super Easy Setup
Finally, Headless Hostman is one of the most ‘white-glove’ services around. The setup is straightforward, with only a few button presses between you and a new static site. Compared to other tools, this conversion process is fast too. All in, it takes minutes to complete, and you have real-time progress updates to keep you in the loop.
Headless Hostman Review: The Power of WordPress and Security of a Static Site
The Headless Hostman setup process is simple. Once you sign up, you have to give the team access to your site. From there, they migrate your dynamic site to a staging server, install the plugin, make the necessary connections, and the setup is complete. Unlike many other static solutions, your site is as near as a mirror as possible to your original dynamic site. The process of managing your site will be the same too.
Once the setup is complete, you’ll spot a new Headless Hostman option on the WordPress dashboard. Clicking this takes you to your hosting management panel.
Overview
The main screen provides an overview of how the tool works and provides answers to some common questions. You’ll also see a few different links that direct you to customer support.
If you’re a developer, you can also find information on custom functions you can use alongside Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP).
You can run a programmatic single push on a page or post, and it’ll also query any mapped pages or posts. The process is similar for deleting a page or post, and this will also delete any associated mappings.
Headless Hostman Settings
Inside the Settings tab, you can tweak your WP Rocket settings if you use the plugin to further optimize your site’s performance. Here, you can also update your 301 redirects if you use the Redirection plugin, and make your new sitemaps live if you’re a Yoast SEO user.
Clicking the Optimize and Tweak Your Settings will take you to the WP Rocket dashboard. WP Rocket is one of the top WordPress speed and performance plugins. If you haven’t yet set the plugin up, the tool will offer guidance on integrating it with Headless Hostman. Many of the settings that could improve your performance will already be active, although you have complete control to tweak things to suit your needs.
The tool will update your 301 redirects and sitemaps for you once you click the relevant buttons in the management panel. If you still need to install the plugins, you can also do this from here too.
Mapping
The Mapping page gives you complete control over how you map posts and pages when you push an update. For example, if you publish a new blog post, you might also want other pages on your site to update where the post appears.
This extends across all of the content and post types currently active on your site.
Full Site Push
In addition to singular or small changes, you can push multiple changes live too through the Full Site Push screen—this includes you entire site or specific post types. This process is quick in comparison with other static site tools.
Make sure you keep an eye on your requests if you push a lot of updates live. Hitting the maximum cap will inhibit your ability to make further changes until a new allocation begins. The good news is that the request limit refreshes every hour.
Post and Page Content Management
You can also push individual pages and posts on the page editor screen: simply click the Update this Page on Headless button.
You can also fully remove the page from your site and preview your page before you push it live. If you schedule a post to go live at a specific date, it will auto-push to your live site upon publishing along with updating any pages that map to it.
Incompatibilities
Not every plugin is compatible with Headless Hostman. You can see a list of these plugins on the Incompatibilities Shortlist screen:
Right now, that list is tiny due to Headless Hostman being a relatively new service. In the future, expect more plugins to live on this list as conflicts arise.
Headless Hostman Review: Pricing
The pricing for Headless Hostman is as straightforward as can be. It starts at $125 per month and supports a single site up to 25,000 page views. You’ll also get 20GB of storage and 50GB of bandwidth.
If you need to support more sites, the Harbinger of Doom plan will be for you. It costs $300 per month, supports up to three websites with higher monthly page views, and comes with more storage and bandwidth. If your needs exceed what this plan provides, you’ll need to reach out to their team for a custom quote.
Headless Hostman Review: Customer Support
You can find the customer support options through the Headless Hostman website. This works on a ticketing model, and you’ll get a response within one business day. There’s also a built-in FAQ section inside the plugin dashboard that provides answers to common questions.
Currently, there’s no documentation, which is a shame. However, the platform and plugin are so simple to use that you might not miss it. Given that the Headless Hostman team handles all of the site setup and configuration, they handle most of the complexities.
Overall, Headless Hostman stands out in the WordPress static site and hosting space. It’s incredibly easy to use and offers a white-glove experience for converting and hosting your static site. If this is something you have avoided so far because of a need for technical knowledge, this solution could be ideal.
Not only that, but the platform is focuses on speed and bulletproof security. The experience is mostly ‘hands-off’, while still feeling like there’s enough control over your site.
Are you considering running a static site, and is Headless Hostman intriguing to you? Share your thoughts and experience in the comments below!
