Static Pages

Automatically wrap a WordPress Theme around a static HTML page. Add the look and feel of WordPress to legacy HTML files.

Author:Keith P. Graham (profile at wordpress.org)
WordPress version required:3.2
WordPress version tested:3.5
Plugin version:1.1
Added to WordPress repository:11-08-2012
Last updated:24-08-2012
Warning! This plugin has not been updated in over 2 years. It may no longer be maintained or supported and may have compatibility issues when used with more recent versions of WordPress.
Rating, %:20
Rated by:1
Plugin URI:http://www.BlogsEye.com/
Total downloads:5 310
Active installs:200+
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The Static Pages plugin takes any existing html file and wraps it with a WordPress theme. Legacy html files can take advantage of all of the WordPress features such as sidebars, widgets and shortcodes. It can embed Adobe PDF files, or audio and video files in a wordpress theme

The plugin works with a variety of file types.

For html type files it extracts the title of the page, the content and any javascript in the header and throws away the rest. It then creates a fake post which it displays in the currently active theme. The legacy web page will appear as a WordPress page using the theme formatting with the theme headers, sidebars and footers. The plugin leaves all of the original file's BODY intact. If the original static page contained headings, menus, sidebars, etc, they will remain and be wrapped in the WordPress theme. Server Side includes (SSI) will, however, be ignored by PHP.

For PDF, audio and video files it displays the pdf on a web page by embedding it.

After installing the plugin it is necessary to alter or add an .htaccess file to the area in your site where the static pages reside. The plugin generates the correct .htaccess directives and you can find them on the plugin's settings page. You can add the lines to the WordPress generated .htaccess after the WordPress section.

Note: The plugin does not change anything on your website. In order to make it work, you have to create an htaccess file and copy it to your server.

Since the static page is not properly a part of wordpress and is not in the WordPress database, the WordPress comment system will not work correctly with them. It is possible, however to direct all comments made on a static page to another page. You can select an existing WordPress page from the configuration options page. It is a good idea to create a simple page that does nothing but collect comments from the static pages.

By default the plugin will use the index.php file in your theme to wrap static pages, but if you have file such as single.php or other custom theme page, you can enter its name on the configuration page.

The main drawback of the system is that older pages often have hand crafted headers, sidebars and footers that may even use absolute positioning. The static page may display these on top of your theme, in which case you may want to alter the orginal files.

The plugin saves the static content that it finds and a widget is included that can be used put a list of static pages on your sidebar so they can be linked directly.

I have been updating my websites since the first version of Netscape Navigator. I created this plugin to wrap a wordpress theme around thousands of pages on my websites.