Can Simply Static used where users can edit pages?

Hey @lynoo,

theoretically possible to do with Simply Static.

The static export runs as a background process, so you can do pretty much anything in WordPress while an export is running.

If you want to do specific updates (only a specific page, for example), you will need Simply Static Pro, as the free version can only do entire exports.

We have a section with code examples that you can use to work your way to the desired solution here: https://simplystatic.com/docs/code-snippets/

Cheers,
Patrick

Hi Patrick,
Thank you for your response, honestly what you built is an incredible plugin, congrats.

However, I need a bit of your help to direct me to the right approach to this, I’m aware that I would need the Pro version, which I will gladly do, no issues here.

But I’m not quite sure about the correct approach here,

I want to build a large site with profiles, the users have to log in and edit their page, so an Auth is needed plus the changes needed to be reflected on the static pages..

is my approach correct, is there a better way?

like if you were in my place what approach would you take to build such a site? your input will help me here in a massive way!

Thanks

Hey @lynoo,

happy to help where I can!

I could think of two possible setups:

Option A) The traditional setup

People edit and publish/edit their pages on your WordPress website (let’s say community.mysite.com).

Each time someone publishes something, this change is tracked somewhere (maybe in a separate DB table to keep it performant).

You use a cron that runs each minute and checks if there is an entry in the table and, if so, picks the oldest result and runs a static export for that.

The only downside is that the static site would be slightly behind the WP site, but as Single Exports are quite fast (usually below 5 seconds), it is only slightly delayed.

Option B) the headless setup

People would publish their pages directly on the static site, and each submission would go to the protected WP site via Rest API.

This would require some additional auth provider or a real-time database (like Firebase) to make that work.

This might be more UX-friendly for the users but harder to set up as it would involve more development time.

Both approaches would work similarly within Simply Static – you trigger an export with the pages you like to update, and Simply Static handles the rest.

I would probably start with option A first, as you can get quite far with that setup, and it doesn’t have a “lock-in” effect.

If the idea takes off, you can step by step move more and more parts headless and slowly transition into option B.

Cheers,
Patrick