
I’ve been moving this blog from one host to another from time to time. As I write less and less and less frequently, having a paid host doesn’t seems make sense anymore. Well, it’s not that expensive, but money spent still money spent right. Despite, I want to have a challenge to find the most cost efficient host ($0). 😀
So this is how I do it now (warning: it’s quite technical):
- Run WordPress on my desktop (via docker container)
- Has Simply Static plugin. The pro version actually has the feature to automate a lot of thing. But as I said, I want to get it to $0. So this is the problem.
- So this is why we have AI today, right. It should help us to solve our problem. Instead of cracking the plugin codes and spending hours of testing/debugging/reading documentation, Claude Code help me on this part.
- On a highlevel, Claude help me to create like a companion WordPress plugin, it call it mu-plugin (TBH, I’m not sure why.. Haha). It’s a specific plugin for Simply Static companion and my use case. It also create some bash script to automate some stuff.
- The final result is: Everytime I create/edit/delete a post or page, it will automatically trigger a static web page generation, publish it to Git Repo. Only that specific post and the homepage page is automatically generated. Full site export still available anytime I want it.
- Since I’ve setup Vercel (now Cloudflare Page) to connect to this repo, the final site (this blog) will automatically get updated. It’ll take some times of course (maybe ~1-3min). But hey.., it’s free..
Now let see, if you are reading this post. That means, the whole flow is working as intended. Thanks to Claude, WordPress, Github and Vercel/Cloudflare.
Final stack:
- Local WordPress (docker) + Simply Static Plugin + Custom Plugin + Custom Bash script
- Github Repo
- Vercel / Cloudflare Pages
*I still pay for Claude subscription of course, but it’s intended for other project, so no additional cost.
**After 6 days: A little update, I just found out that there is Cloudflare Pages (duh!). So I moved from Vercel to Cloudflare Pages. Why? Of course because Cloudflare is the biggest content delivery globally. Faster speed. 😀