Blog

Delivering a completely static version of your WordPress site with free and automated HTTPS is easy. Just generate your static site with Shifter and deploy. While this process is simple to do it can take a bit of time depending on your site and its settings. Here are a few tips on how to manage […]

Our latest updates to Shifter offer a few much-requested domain update and improvements to feeds for maximum SEO vibes. Secure sites easier with improved Shifter custom domain validation. We’ve added DNS based authentication for registering SSL Certs for custom domains. All WordPress sites running on Shifter come with free and nothing to install SSL. You […]

Shifter is proud to present The Burning Monk by Yan Cui; a WordPress blog covering all things serverless. As a serverless static hosting service it’s a perfect fit for our first featured site. Yan is a functional programmer, cloud architect, learner, trainer, speaker, and the instructor for Production-Ready Serverless. He’s also the Co-Author of F# Deep […]

PHP has historically been the de facto way to build forms with WordPress. Any plugin relying on WordPress functions is going to use PHP and this is neither good or bad, it’s a part of the WordPress ecosystem. This can present a few issues when migrating to a different hosting environment that doesn’t support PHP. […]

One of the most relied upon features for bloggers using WordPress has to be RSS. This longtime built-in feature offers readers and 3rd party services a way to connect and stay updated with your site’s content. While Shifter does create a static version of your WordPress site, leveraging the flexibility of the RSS is still […]

Shifter now supports AMP for WordPress by Automattic. This feature is now generally available for every customer on every project. Now instantly load Static WordPress sites optimized for mobile. AMP is an Open Source project led by Google with a mission to improve the performance of web content and advertisements [i]. It works by compressing HTML, CSS, […]

Support Plugin Updates The Shifter Support Plugin makes it easy for you to display diag info, create reports and generate new static Artifacts directly from the dashboard! The latest update to this plugin adds a feature for copying site data for the Support team to debug while contacting support. PHP Updates After running a trial […]

Last week we celebrated JAWS Days 2018, the signature event for the largest Amazon Web Services User Group in Japan! Participating as a sponsor for this year’s JAWS Days, Shifter and the DigtialCube were able to connect with other AWS professionals. Our team present topics on Serverless WordPress and how we’re integrating Alexa as a […]

This update and release includes improved pagination support, UI changes, and WordPress updates. Any new site launching on Shifter will be running the latest WordPress version, 4.9.4. We’ve updated the Generator function to better handle pagination support related to Custom Post Types. UI updates include displaying usage of Shifter sites within the Dashboard to help […]

Generate Static Sites from the WordPress Dashboard Shifter-Support is a new addition to the Shifter Plugins line up. Including functionality for controlling the WordPress container, Generating Artifacts from the WordPress Dashboard. It also displays diagnostic information, helpful for troubleshooting or contacting support. This Plugin is included as a mu-plugin on every new Shifter project. No need […]

Shifter API Public API documentation for Shifter Version 2 release is now available. View the projects on Github or the API doc website. Download the Swagger config to add to your API project such as Postman or SwaggerHub and please feel free to contribute with your feedback on Github. Shifter Local Officially announced the public […]

Shifter is a static site generator and hosting platform for WordPress. Creating a static WordPress site and deploying that to the Shifter CDN comes as an integrated option but it’s not the only one! Netlify offers tools for developers to build, deploy, and manage sites from the command line interface or with continuous deployment options like Git. Using Shifter and […]

Dear Shifter Customers, thank you for using Shifter! We have exciting updates coming your way and wanted to announce the end-of-life date for Shifter Version 1. We’ve decided to sunset Version 1 as an effort to focus on the latest release of Shifter and continue to deliver new features and performance. Over one year ago, […]

New Features Projects statistics Usage across all sites is now aggregated and visible in one place. You can check usage and transfer amount in the Account area under Statistics. Created and last launched date You can check projects’ created and last launched date Artifacts are now downloadable Artifacts created after December 1st are now downloadable. […]

Enhanced Pagination Abilities Shifter now supports pagination for categories, tags and archives. Previously, Shifter focused on generating posts, pages and their paginated results if any. We’ve added that same functionality to Categories, Tags, and Archives. You can now reliability develop and use themes with those features and seamlessly create static versions with many pages. Updated […]

1 year ago at WordCamp US 2016 in Philadelphia, we launched Shifter. Our mission was to bring Static Site Generators and Serverless to WordPress Hosting. To our customers and fans we wanted to say, thank you! It’s has been your continued support that has allowed us to develop these ideas and collaborate over the last year. […]

We’re about to have our biggest week ever. Shifter team members from around the world will gather in Las Vegas to kick-off a very busy week. This will be our first time sponsoring AWS re:Invent followed by (as in the very next day) WordCamp US. That’s right! Two milestone events for AWS and WordPress happening […]

We feel very lucky to attend ServerlessConf Tokyo and also sponsor this year’s event. That makes two ServerlessConf sponsorships in one year! Most importantly for us, it was our first speaking opportunity at Serverless Conference! We decided to talk about our experience creating Shifter with the goal of inspiring others to find opportunities in their […]

Be popular demand, we’ve updated Shifter’s container runtime so you can get more done. Previous to this update Shifter would run WordPress a max time of 60 minutes before powering down. We’ve extended this to 180 minutes (3 hours) of normal operation. Also, we added a function that will watch for inactivity in the WordPress […]

Introducing Agency+ Need to host a lot of WordPress sites? The new Agency+ plan on will cover up to 50 WordPress sites and includes all the features of Agency, Business, and Personal. More Sites on Personal Plans We increased the number of sites the Personal plan from 1 to 3 projects, adding more flexibility for […]

Serverlessconf NYC is over but it has sure given us a lot to think about. It really feels like this community is taking a stake in what comes next for serverless and why it matters. For us attending and sponsoring Serverlessconf was about connecting with other developers. It was a perfect sounding board to talk […]

Today we announce our largest update and release of Shifter yet. So much has changed we are considering this a full version upgrade. Move over Shifter version one, the next phase has arrived! It’s 30 to 50 times faster With this update, our engineers decided nothing was off the table. We set out to improve […]

Let’s welcome back again, Serverlessconf NYC! The community-sourced event for all things Serverless. And! We are so thrilled to announce our sponsorship of this years event taking place in Hells Kitchen, NYC. Shifter is sponsoring Serverlessconf for a couple reasons. First, we believe that Serverless is the future of software architecture. Second, WordPress should be […]

What’s new for this years AWS re:Invent? Everything! There’s no shortage of good news coming form one of the worlds largest tech conferences this year. Whether you’re an armchair attendee or on-location walking sessions until your soles wear thin, here are a few things to look forward to. 1. Largest re:Invent Ever If you had the […]

For this update, we focused on improving the Shifter API so our developers would have more options to bring new UI features and data into the Dashboard. We also added a few helpful tools not available in the previous version. New Shifter Dashboard With an updated API we decided to improve the Dashboard experience with […]

The Shifter Alexa Skill is now available! This Skill adds Shifter and Serverless WordPress news to your Echo or Alexa enabled device Flash Briefing. To add Shifter News to your Flash Briefing lineup open the Alexa App on your mobile device and search, Shifter. You can also browse the list of available Skills from the […]

Find your tribe at WCPUB WordCamps are never a bad time and WordCamp for Publishers was no exception. This first-time event in Denver brought together web development professionals and publication industry leaders alike. This WordCamp was created to focus on well, publishers, but more specifically anyone working on sites of a larger scale that may […]

WordCamp DC was a blast! This weekend left me thinking, how has this not happened before? The quality of speakers and variety of sessions came together at the historic Carnegie Library to create a truly unique experience and I cannot wait for WordCamp DC 2018. I would have never guessed this was a first-time event […]

I’m so excited to be speaking at the WordCamp DC! Not only is this my first time speaking at WordCamp it’s the first ever WordCamp DC. The event is less than one week away and event organizers really have me looking forward to the event with the constant stream of updates on social media announcing […]

WordCamp Europe is over and the community has outdone themselves again! This world class event brought together the largest number of WordPress developers and users in one place. Hosted in Paris at the Les Docks de Paris this year, with over 1,900 in attendance and available on live stream if you couldn’t make the event. […]

WordCamp Kyoto WordCamp Kyoto 2017 ended this past weekend and we were sad to see it go. It was such a well planned and designed event, packed with seasoned speakers, attendees, contributors, and sponsors. If you missed the event but plan on visiting Kyoto in the future, be sure to check our Kyoto guide. Something […]

This release focused on the Shifter API. For us, evolving the API is an opportunity to improve speed, give devs more resources to build tools and plugins with Shifter, and allow our developers to write new features. It started as a WordPress static site generator and evolved Shifter as a fully hosted WordPress solution. Static […]

Custom Artifact Names A few weeks ago, we had released the Artifacts feature. This introduced the ability to create and save versions of your site for deployment. These come in handy for rolling back features or setting up staging sites before going into production. You can now modify Artifacts with a custom unique name. Say […]

This August Dan Olson of DigitalCube is attending the inaugural WordCamp for Publishers as a speaker presenting on the topic of security and representing Shifter as an event sponsor. WordCamp for Publishers is focused on, well, publishers but a lot more than that. From the lineup so far sessions will include global censorship on the web […]

Shifter is headed to WordCamp Kyoto as a 2017, Gold Sponsor. This year’s theme is: connect to __, which is quite fitting considering the growing number of applications, devices, and new ways developers are discovering to use WordPress. As the event site states, WordCamp Kyoto 2017 aims to make it a place where various products and people can […]

Artifacts on Shifter give users flexibility over how they deploy and manage specific versions of WordPress sites on Shifter. Much like backups or snapshots, Artifacts are a copy of your entire site at a specific moment. Each time you generate a new version of your Shifter site, it’s kept as an Artifact. Like a git […]

This latest release includes improvements overall and added features to help manage projects. We are committed to continually improve Shifter so send us your feedback! If you have an idea or request, let us know. @getshifter User Interface Improvements Project Name Updates Changed Project ID to Project Name so it’s easier to find and reference […]

Our latest Shifter release includes the “Skip Pages” plugin, a WordPress hotfix update, improved service with Intercom Chat Support, and a highly requested feature for extending preferred domain name options. New Feature!: Shifter Skip Pages Plugin This WordPress plugin for Shifter was designed to skip sometimes unnecessary pages such as Archives, Attachment Pages, RSS Feeds and […]

Deciding to power WordPress with Aurora was easy. Amazon Aurora is a drop-in MySQL replacement built and managed by AWS that comes with unparalleled speed, scalability, and durability. To start our migration and upgrade, we began performance testing and focused on a few areas like admin performance, publishing, reads, and errors. What we found is that the […]

Deciding to move your online business to WordPress comes with no shortage of plugin options. As the number of WordPress eCommerce plugins continues to grow there are more 3rd party providers offering product integrations with WordPress. Choosing which plugins or provider to use on Shifter comes with a few considerations. Shifter works by transforming each […]

Building Shifter we aimed at creating something that was more secure, scalable, and fast. Really Fast. By design those first two, secure and scalable, are taken care of. The unique way Shifter handles the WordPress installation and Dashboard is so that only Shifter users can access that area. Placing each WordPress installation in a secure […]

Shifter is now backed by Amazon Aurora! With the introduction of Amazon Aurora this release has been our most powerful yet. Increase speeds of 60-80% by migrating to our latest platform release. We encourage all customers to update for added performance, security, and stability. Let’s get your site moving at lightning speed! These features are […]

Dear Shifter Customer, We are writing to share some exciting news! Starting today the current Pay-As-You-Go model will be replaced with new fixed plan options. We want Shifter to be simple and think the pricing should be too. You spoke, we listened, and thank you for the feedback. Get started for as low as $15/mo […]

Shifter makes it possible to host your WordPress websites statically across a variety of CDNs. While this innovation solves a number of problems (and provides many cost and workload benefits, as described in our Shifter Case blog post), there is one thing Shifter websites cannot handle: dynamic functions handled by PHP. But there’s good news: […]

You know that team Shifter is here to make your life easier, one static WordPress website at a time. Well, now we’ve gone and upped our game by partnering with Netlify, the automated content-delivery experts.   Netlify is a unified platform that automates code to create high-performance, easily maintainable websites and apps. They integrate with […]