I run a teeny tiny nonprofit, TechSAV, and we have a poorly maintained WordPress site. We picked a very professional-looking thing eight years ago, and haven’t changed it since.
Well, now our hosting company says the version of PHP we’re on is end-of-life (RIP) and we have to upgrade, but there’s something in our ancient theme that won’t allow us to upgrade without incident.
I don’t have time for this. I don’t actually like the site as it is, nor do I have the time to figure out what’s wrong with the theme (which is no longer for sale) or to migrate to a new theme.
So, what am I going to do? I’m going to spend tomorrow morning creating a very simple static HTML page with all the links from the homepage and replace it.
Before that, I’ll export the posts, and then will probably tinker with a static site generator at some point (which, let’s just be honest, I’ll never get to).
I miss the days of static HTML. Anyone with a directory exposed to the web could publish a poorly formed index.html, and ta-da, you were on the web!
Now? It’s my profession, so everything feels like work, and let’s face it, it all feels like work. I feel bad for people just learning web development – I talk to a lot of them. You have to know so much to be productive, and a lot more than that to be employable. If I started today, I’m not sure I would have had the patience for it all.
I’m not pining for the old days, really. I’m pining for simplicity, for the small web, the personal messy web. Maybe my little non-profit’s homepage will be fun. I’ll be able to write just HTML and just CSS. I won’t even add any javascript. It’ll be Static As Fuck.
Yes, that’s the movement… welcome to the Static As Fuck Web 1.0.