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Static Publisher Architecture​

Static Publisher is not just a static export button. It is a publishing architecture built around a deliberate separation of concerns.

The three main layers​

1. WordPress is the source and control plane​

WordPress remains the editorial source of truth. Editors can keep working with Gutenberg, Elementor, media, SEO plugins, and normal content workflows.

The Static Publisher plugin adds the operations surface inside WordPress:

  • target and runtime configuration,
  • queueing of crawl, deploy, invalidate, and single-URL jobs,
  • diagnostics and status views,
  • audit and log access,
  • scheduler rule authoring.

2. The exporter is the execution engine​

The separately installed @smart-cloud/publisher-exporter CLI is what actually performs the work:

  • crawl the rendered site,
  • discover required assets,
  • rewrite URLs for the target environment,
  • publish to S3,
  • invalidate CloudFront,
  • process queued jobs from runtime JSON files.

Because it runs outside PHP, the exporter can live on the same host, on a dedicated runner, or in CI/CD automation.

3. AWS is the delivery runtime​

The public delivery path is designed around S3 + CloudFront. In that model, WordPress becomes the editing system, while AWS serves the public site.

This gives teams a cleaner split between:

  • authoring and operations in WordPress,
  • crawl and deploy execution in the exporter,
  • public runtime delivery at the AWS edge.

Why this is more than a basic export​

A basic static export tool can generate files. Static Publisher aims to cover the surrounding production concerns too:

  • rendered-page crawling,
  • target-domain rewriting,
  • queue and scheduler workflows,
  • repeatable logs and archived job artifacts,
  • deployment profiles for multi-target releases,
  • off-host execution when WordPress itself cannot run Node or Playwright.

How Static Publisher connects to the rest of WP Suite​

Gatey and Static Guardian​

Static Publisher handles public delivery. When a statically published site needs authenticated areas, Gatey handles Cognito login in the browser and Static Guardian can protect CloudFront paths on the AWS side.

AI-Kit​

AI-Kit can provide frontend AI features, chat, or grounded search on a site that is delivered statically. Static Publisher therefore fits naturally with a WordPress-as-editor, AWS-as-runtime model.

Flow​

Flow brings forms and workflows back into the architecture when static delivery alone is not enough. Public pages can stay static while submissions, automations, and backend logic continue through Flow and AWS services.

Operational takeaway​

Treat the plugin as the control plane and the exporter as the execution engine. That mental model makes the rest of the product easier to reason about: WordPress queues and configures; the runner crawls and publishes.