GM - This newsletter is about growth; in life and business.

Welcome to Torch Wednesdays:

• 1 quote, story, or idea to inspire, and how to apply it

• 1 philosophy, mental model, side quest, or tactic to try

• 1 meme to make you think

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How To Build & Host Unlimited Static Sites For FREE Using Cloudflare Pages Built With WordPress

Want to build and deploy 100s, 1000s, or even berjillions of sites but hosting f—cking sucks and you’re a cheap-ass so you’re stuck with your garbage free shared $2.99/mo hosting plan?

Enter Cloudflare Pages + Simply Static + LocalWP (WordPress) + ZipWP… and the infinite site hosting scheme that costs you $0.00.

In this tutorial, I’m going to show you how to get a 50+ page site live on the web in a couple hours flat, with no hosting costs, no software costs, using AI, a few free tools, and Cloudflare.

Very Important Caveat: these are static sites live on the web, there’s no live WordPress admin dashboard or CMS. We will be building in WP (locally and with AI), exporting the static files, and using Cloudflare to deploy the static files. Please understand what that means before trying this. Once the site is live, you cannot work on it like a normal WP build: you must rebuild it locally, and redeploy it (it’s easy!).

What this tutorial is not:

• SEO, article writing, AI-writing tutorial (nope)

• How to use WordPress tutorial (no)

• Affiliate or MMO tutorial (sorry)

• Installing GSC, GA4, branding, conversions, or anything like that (def not!)

• etc.

This is just a tutorial for getting these sites up: you’ll need to figure out your content and everything else on your own, but if you need help with that, our community is perfect.

What can be built with this and who should be using it?

• Unlimited live static sites or any static sites built using good ol’ familiar WordPress (doesn’t have to be WP, but we will focus on WP in this tutorial.)

• Unlimited staging/concept sites to show clients (perfect for agencies doing multiple staging build outs or using pre-built sites to lure clients).

• Affiliates doing quick site build outs, AI-niche sites, landing pages, etc.

Brief overview and tools we are using:

• Cloudflare allows anyone to create unlimited free static sites, called Pages, and yes, you can DNS it to your own domain.

• Simply Static let’s anyone create a static HTML version of their WP site for free.

• LocalWP let’s you build a WP site locally on your machine, so during the build out phase, no need for hosting.

• Zip WP is optional in this process, but will help speed up development. Zip WP let’s you use AI to quickly build out a WP site. I’d say it gets you about 80% there, with the theme, copy, pages, etc. all built in a few clicks with AI.

• ChatGPT (or whatever flavor of bullshit artist you choose) for free content generation. You can be much more efficient with this part using something like Cuppa as it connects to WP, but there are costs to using tools like that, and I’m trying to keep this t00t free, damnit.

Sidenote: If you need training on using Cuppa for programmatic content, jump in our Discord and navigate to the #-Archmage channel. You can create 100s of articles quickly with Cuppa, and auto-publish them to WP during the ZipWP portion of this training.

Getting started:

Create a free Cloudflare account, install LocalWP on your machine, and sign up for ZipWP. For SimplyStatic there is a free WP plugin you will install once WP is running on LocalWP, so no need for an account, but they do have a premium option as well which comes in handy if you want extra features.

FYI - in this tutorial, I’m not going to explain how to use every single tool. Figure that out on your own. I’m going to show you my process to launch these sites. Each of these tools has plenty of educational content, youtube tutorials, etc. I will link the Doc’s below.

Step By Step

Important: Want to use AI with ZipWP to spin up your sites and skip building the WP build manually? Start here, or move to the next section if you want to create WP sites manually:

ZipWP AI-Sites Instructions (Help Docs)

1. (Optional) - Use ZipWp.com and simply walk through all of their prompts to build out a starter version of your site using AI. This will save a ton of time and takes ~2 minutes to get the initial site done. ZipWP will install a theme like Astra, write the placeholder copy on each page, create the branding etc. all based on a few prompts. The bummer here is you only get 2 AI sites on their free plan.

2. Get the site as close to production ready as possible. Meaning: create all your posts, pages, finalize branding, etc. that wasn’t done in the spin-up. Use something like ChatGPT to create all your copy, posts, and pages. You want it to be pretty much finished to your standards. Note: in the free plan, AI-sites are only live for 24 HOURS. So if you’re not done, it’s OK! Just move on to step 3 below, because you can finish your site in LocalWP.

3. In ZipWP plugins area, install the WPvivid (free) plugin to create a backup of your site. Just search “WPvivid” in the WP plugins. Activate it. Here’s Wpvivid docs if you need them.

4. Create a full backup of your site, choose “WordPress Files + database”, that will backup the ENTIRE site, HTML, images, WP, etc.

5. Now download the zip file somewhere safe.

If you’re skipping ZipWP, and building manually from scratch, start below.

LocalWP Instructions (Help Docs)

Here is a really good YouTube demonstration on setting up LocalWP via Mac/PC/Linux by Ferdy (You only need up to about the 6:20 mark)

LocalWP gives you a local environment to work on your sites. This is important if you ever want to update or change the sites. Once it’s live in CF, you can’t simply login and update the live site because there is no back-end - only front-end (static) files.

I found LocalWP honestly to be the most technical part of this, but once you learn how to use it, it’s an incredibly powerful tool.

1. Log in to LocalWP and check out the help docs above to spin up a new local WordPress site (single site, NOT multi site), log in to the site panel, and:

   1. If you’re building WP from scratch, build out your site and get it 100% done - just like any WP build, using LocalWP let’s you choose theme, create content, etc.

   2. If you started with ZipWP above, log in to your WP sites admin panel, download the WPvivid plugin, and restore your backup that you created in step 3 above. Your site will now be a clone of your ZipWP build, and you can continue where you left off.

      • At this stage, finalize your site so it’s 100% done. Sometimes stuff can get funky when using a backup to rebuild a site, so you’re going to want to go back thru the site really quick and make sure everything looks good.

2. In your WP admin area, navigate to Plugins, search Plugins for SimplyStatic, Download the SimplyStatic Plugin and activate it.

SimplyStatic Instructions (Help Docs)

SimplyStatic is an amazing plugin that let’s you build static sites fast. REMEMBER: these are static HTML sites, not dynamic sites. SimplyStatic will basically compile a full static version of your site. Every page, post, etc. Read their FAQs here if you’re not clear on what all that means.

Continuing from above:

1. Make sure there no errors showing in the SimplyStatic settings (common if for example you do not have SSL set up in LocalWP).

2. Click the “generate static files” button, then when it’s done, click the “click here to download” link as shown here:

CloudFlare Instructions (Docs Here)

Don’t ask me to explain why CloudFlare let’s you host as many free static sites as you want, but they do - these are called “Pages” in CF.

1. Create a new “Website” in Cloudflare, and configure DNS so CF is the DNS provider.

   • Click “+ Add site”.

   • Add your domain in the next page.

   • Choose “Free” on the next page when they try and sell you a subscription.

   • Click “Continue”.

   • Complete the steps to setup DNS - CF will scan for DNS records, you’ll need to go back into your domain registrar and DNS it over to CF.

2. Next, the actual SimplyStatic site files. This is where “Pages” comes in. These are not the same as “Websites” in CF. Confusing, I know.

   1. Click on “Workers & Pages” on the left nav.

   2. Click the “Create” button on this page.

   3. Click on the “Pages” tab.

   4. Click “Upload Assets”.

   5. Give it a project name (the site name probably).

   6. Upload your SimplyStatic export here.

   7. Click Deploy Site. This will automatically put your site on a free subdomain on CF.

   8. By now, your DNS should be working with your custom domain.

   9. Go back into “Workers & Pages”

   10. Click on the Page you created.

   11. Click on “Custom Domains,” then “Set up a custom domain.”

   12. Add the domain you DNS’d over earlier, click continue.

   13. Click “Activate Domain” and wait for DNS to finish setting up.

   14. You should be all done at this stage, and CF will have pushed your static site to your live domain, and a staging site.

   15. IF IT’S NOT LIVE ON PRODUCTION - Troubleshoot: go back into Pages, Choose your Site, check in “Custom domains” and make sure it’s Active, Click on “Deployments”, Click “Create new deployment”, Reupload your SimplyStatic files, click on “Save and Deploy”

What’s Next? Updating Your Site & Advanced Version Using GitHub.

Ok, at this stage you might be wondering - great, wtf do I do now? How do I update the site? Good question: since these are static files, you can do two things:

1) Free Way: Rebuild in LocalWP and redeploy: 

Simple: go back into your LocalWP, work on the site in any way you want, add new posts, pages, whatever. Do the SimplyStatic steps again and download a new SS file. Then repeat Step 15 above, redeploy. Boom you’re done.

2) Advanced Version: Using GitHub and the PRO SimplyStatic option 👾 

Ok - here’s the crazy thing.

You can actually push all the files to GitHub and Deploy them to CF via a Git repo and the pro version of Simply Static. The advantage to doing it this way is you don’t have to log back into CloudFlare to redeploy. You can just use Simply Static to push your files to Git-Hub and automatically update your CloudFlare front end.

[Not affiliate links] Here’s exactly how, and here’s a video tutorial.

Really Makes Ya Think

I chose this because of how damn long that tutorial was. My bad for that. But here’s the weird thing: I know that most people will not follow through with long tutorials. Sad. Makes ya think, too. If you’re stuck, feel free to jump in our Discord and ask for help! That’s a high leverage skill, ya know.

Quote To Change Your Perspective

Apply it:

• Focus only on what you can control.

• Do not linger on the past, live in the moment, dwell on the future.

• Ask yourself; on death's door, what did I live for, and did I build that free static site Sam showed me?

If you didn’t build those free static sites on CloudFlare, that’s OK. According to Seneca, f-ck it. Who cares. Not me.