In reply to Jesse.

Hi Jesse, I'm Shin who work for Shifter. Thank you for your comment.

Regarding "Cache on CDN", I totally see your point and it was one of the most frequent questions I got from people at the WordCamp US booth conversation when presenting this idea/concept.

If we look at the speed we get by "Caching pages on CDN" way and Shifter way, there's not much difference. Eventually, they are served from the same kind network, so you're right.

But here's the thing. The biggest difference between caching on CDN and generating HTMLs beforehand is the existence of computing. What Shifter does after generating all pages is to shut down the WordPress until you log in next time. There will be no WordPress or a server that contains the WP, PHP, or database. This can give you the ease that no one can attack your WordPress, because there's nothing to hack.

If a tech-savvy company is truly into serving static files, they wouldn’t be using WordPress in the first place. If a non-tech-savvy company is building a website, they don’t know what any of this means.

This is the biggest challenge we face. I like Jekyll, Middleman and other static website generators a lot. I like the simplicity: generate, put them somewhere, and done! But unfortunately, they are not as easy to use as WordPress. One of the reasons WordPress is loved by all tech level people is that it enables everyone to have their websites by choose themes they like, add plugins to achieve their goals, and publish contents. We think it is wonderful if we can offer both the simplicity of the static site generators and the good points of WordPress at the same time.

Thank you!