Last Updated on March 4, 2026
MakeStaticSite is a set of Bash shell scripts that configure and use Wget to generate a static website from a (typically dynamic) website, with various options to tailor and deploy the output.
It aims to improve the performance and security of public-facing websites, whilst allowing continuity in the way they are developed and maintained, without requiring technical know-how on behalf of users.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- A straightforward command line interface
- Able to create static versions of a wide range of dynamic websites, with support for retrieving content from the site root or any subdirectory
- Support for managing multiple sites, each with custom settings
- Setup script, which guides users with an interactive dialogue and automatically generates a configuration file.
- During setup, choose from three run levels to determine the amount of customisation – from minimal to advanced.
- In addition to the main host domain, additional assets such as JavaScript, CSS and images can be retrieved and collated from other domains and subdomains
- A phased-based workflow separating different aspects in the build process
- Deep search for orphaned Web assets, later retrieved in further runs of Wget
- Suitable for batch processes, allowing operations to be scaled up so that any or all of the sites are updated in one process.
- Support for HTTP basic authentication and/or CMS login (experimental, only tested with WordPress)
- Partial support for sites archived by the Wayback Machine
- Basic support for generating WARC files (and also content indexes).
- Runtime settings include verbosity (amount of information) for terminal output and logging to file
- Option of a downloadable copy of the entire site (ZIP file) for offline use
- Local and remote (server) deployment options, including rsync over ssh and Netlify.
- For WordPress installations, optional WP-CLI-based site streamlining with a drop-in search replacement (WP Offline Search plugin) that works offline.
- Snippets — for tweaking page with offline variants using chunks of HTML.
- Assistance for W3C standards compliance with HTML Tidy. The system also generates a
- sitemap XML and robots.txt file under the primary domain to match the outputted files.
- Support for the Wayback Machine, including date-time ranges.
Website: github.com/paultraf/makestaticsite
Support:
Developer: Paul Trafford
License: GNU Affero General Public License v3.0
Related Software
| Bash Static Site Generators | |
|---|---|
| bashblog | Simple blog system written in a single bash script. Download, run, write, done |
| MakeStaticSite | Generate and deploy static websites |
| Jenny | Bash-based static blog generator |
| Exposé | Simple static site generator for photoessays |
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