A WordPress site rebuilt as static files in one sitting

Static HTML · Python generators · Cloudflare Pages · Pages Functions · Resend

sowonpark.com Source on request August 2026 Client work, end to end

~2 hrsstart to live
248 MBof originals, to 13 MB
29tiles recovered exactly
$0a year to host

The problem

A film portfolio sat on WordPress on shared hosting that was being cancelled. Three plugins deep, 248 MB of media, and a contact form on Contact Form 7 and Akismet.

The hard part was not the pages. It was the gallery: which still image linked to which Vimeo film existed only inside a plugin's own JSON. Lose that and 29 tiles become 29 guesses.

What I built

Recovered the mapping first. Scraped the WordPress REST API and pulled the gallery block's JSON, so every image-to-film link came across exactly rather than by eye.
Rebuilt the site with no framework, no build step and no dependencies. Two small Python generators: one produces responsive image derivatives, the other writes the HTML from a manifest.
Replaced the contact form with a Pages Function, 57 lines using Resend, with a honeypot, Turnstile verification, length caps and HTML escaping. Two plugins and a subscription became one file.
Preserved the SEO. Old WordPress media paths, wp-admin and wp-login all 301 to the right places, so nothing that was indexed broke.
Handed the client their mail. Exported both mailboxes before the host went dark and moved ongoing delivery to free Cloudflare Email Routing, with a plain-English document explaining how to open the archive.

Architecture

Runtime: Static HTML, CSS and JavaScript. No framework, no build step, no npm dependencies at runtime.
Generators: Two Python scripts using only the standard library plus Pillow: one for image derivatives at three widths in WebP and JPEG, one for the page itself.
Forms: A Cloudflare Pages Function calling Resend, with honeypot, Turnstile, length caps and escaping.
Delivery: Cloudflare Pages, with a redirect map preserving every indexed WordPress URL.

Engineering discipline

The checks that make fast work safe. Every one of these is in the repo.

Fidelity over speed on the one thing that mattered. The gallery mapping was recovered from data, not reconstructed from memory, because a wrong film under a still is worse than a missing one.
The hosting bill went to zero and the attack surface went with it. No plugins, no admin login, nothing to patch.
The client was left whole. Mail archived and forwarding moved before the old host was switched off, with written instructions rather than a verbal handover.

Built with AI, gated by tests

Two hours from first commit to a live site is what this method is for. Small, well-specified, fully verifiable work.

The verification here was not a test suite, it was the data: the recovered gallery JSON is the ground truth that says the 29 tiles are right.

What shipped

Live at sowonpark.com, on Cloudflare Pages, at no hosting cost.
248 MB of WordPress originals became a 13 MB static site with responsive images at three widths.
Built and shipped in a single session on 17 August 2026.

Live: sowonpark.com