Static vs Dynamic

For years, I've used WordPress to make things on the internet. Mostly, I've used the Thesis framework to make things easier. Late in 2012¹, the long-awaited major Thesis update arrived - Thesis 2.0. I love to have the latest and greatest, so I immediately downloaded and set up Thesis 2.0 on a development server.

What a disaster.

This article isn't about bashing Thesis 2.0.² But when I realized how different Thesis 2.0 was from Thesis 1.8.x.... I had to take a step back. Learning the new software would've required a heavy investment. Not in money, of course - my developer's license paid for itself long ago. My cost would be time, something I simply don't have much to spare. Stepping back and thinking things over, I came to three choices.

1. Suck it up and learn the very different and utterly undocumented Thesis 2.0.
2. Finally get serious with the very popular Genesis framework.
3. Branch out into static sites.

The third choice is ridiculous, of course. WordPress has been my automatic choice for every site I've built for several years. I never gave another tool a thought - WordPress was the choice. But I was facing a significant time investment for each of the three choices. No matter which way I went, it was going to be a pain in the ass.

Dynamic means slow

There are a thousand great reasons to use WordPress. But there are plenty of reasons not to use it. For starters, it's slow.³ That's a dangerous statement, but bear with me. Every time you view a page on a WordPress site, it makes various calls to the database. Sometimes it's a few calls, sometimes it's a lot. But it does this every time you visit a page. All those database calls add up, and can contribute to a page loading much slower than you would like.

Yes, there are caching options available. Every one of them is a pain in the ass. Some settings work on some servers, but break your site on other servers. Some settings make your site blazing fast if your server is set up in one way, but bring your site to it's knees if your server is slightly different. Good luck figuring out which is which. Then there are the server issues. All those database calls aren't free, and use plenty of server resources. An overloaded server means slower response times, and at worst, site outages.

If you have enough expertise, time, and patience, (or money,) you can absolutely make a blazing fast, super stable WordPress site. But you'll need to make sure you're on the right host. Make sure your server is set up just so. Make sure you have your caching plugin tuned correctly. Don't forget to use the proper framework. Praying helps, too.

Static means fast

Static sites are generated when you update them. The generators take theme files and a folder full of markdown files, chew them up, and spit out old fashioned HTML files. Yes, .html - not .php. Once the site is generated, your server only has to serve static files. The .html, the .css, and any images. No PHP logic. No database calls. No database. No caching plugins. All the logic is handled at the time you build or rebuild the site. When someone visits a page in your site, it just loads instantly.

It's not all roses and unicorns

Static sites are a pain in their own way. For one, you need to regenerate the site whenever you make a change. Usually that involves some sort of command line nerdery. Putting together a basic script can streamline the process, but that's just more nerdery.

Speed wins

My final choice wasn't all that hard. I didn't want to learn Thesis 2.0. I hated it.⁴ I will eventually figure out Genesis. But more than anything, I wanted speed. Nothing beats pure HTML if speed is your goal. Nothing. So this site is now built on the static site generator called Pelican.

Why Pelican? I could have chosen Jekyll, Octopress, or plenty of similar tools. I chose Pelican because it uses Python, which I am slowly learning. That's it — the other choices may have been better. So far, though, Pelican has done the job perfectly.