depress 🔓

De-press yourself. Migrate any WordPress blog to Astro + Keystatic in minutes. Free hosting forever.

Why?

Your WordPress bill is depressing. Hosting a simple blog shouldn't cost $20–50/month.

depress converts your WordPress site to a fully static site with a visual CMS — deployed for free on Cloudflare Pages, with content stored in GitHub, and edited through a beautiful Keystatic admin panel.

WordPress (expensive)           Your new stack (free)
─────────────────────           ─────────────────────
MySQL database         →        Markdown files in Git
wp-content/uploads/    →        Cloudflare CDN
PHP + Apache           →        Static HTML (Astro build)
WP Admin               →        Keystatic visual editor
$20-50/month           →        $0/month. Forever.

What gets migrated

• All posts — with frontmatter (title, date, category, tags, excerpt, cover image)
• All pages — including parent/child hierarchy
• Navigation — parsed from your WP menus, converted to working links
• Media — images copied to /public/media/, links rewritten automatically
• Categories & tags — with their own archive pages
• Keystatic config — generated with all your collections pre-wired
• Complete Astro project — ready to npm start and see your blog in the browser

Quick start

Migrate from WordPress

# Put your export.xml in the current folder, then:
npx @depress-org/depress migrate

# Or specify paths explicitly:
npx @depress-org/depress migrate --input export.xml --wp-dir ./public_html --output ./my-blog

Then:

cd my-blog
npm start         # installs deps + starts dev server
# → http://localhost:4321          (your blog)
# → http://localhost:4321/keystatic  (CMS admin)

Start a new blog from scratch

npx @depress-org/depress init

Migration workflow

Step 1 — Export your WordPress site:

• Go to wp-admin → Tools → Export → All content → Download
• (Optional) Download your WordPress public_html folder from hosting

Step 2 — Run depress:

# With only the XML (images downloaded from your live site):
npx @depress-org/depress migrate --input export.xml

# With local WP folder (images served locally, faster + works offline):
npx @depress-org/depress migrate --input export.xml --wp-dir ./public_html

Step 3 — Start your new blog:

cd output
npm start

Step 4 — Deploy for free:

• Push to GitHub
• Connect repo to Cloudflare Pages (build command: npm run build, output: dist/)
• Update keystatic.config.ts to use kind: 'github' for production CMS

Options

depress migrate [options]

  -i, --input <path>    WordPress XML export file
  -d, --wp-dir <path>   WordPress public_html directory (for local media)
  -o, --output <path>   Output directory (default: ./output)

depress init            Create a new blank Astro + Keystatic blog (interactive)

Output structure

output/
  src/
    content/
      articles/         ← migrated posts (Markdoc)
      pages/            ← migrated pages (Markdoc)
      categories/       ← category entries (YAML)
      tags/             ← tag entries (YAML)
    pages/
      index.astro       ← home page with latest articles
      blog/[slug].astro ← article pages
      category/[slug].astro ← category archive pages
      [...slug].astro   ← WP pages
    components/
    layouts/
    data/
      navigation.json   ← your WP menu, ready to use
  public/
    media/              ← all migrated images
  keystatic.config.ts   ← CMS config, pre-wired
  astro.config.mjs
  package.json          ← npm start just works

Packages

| Package | Description | |---------|-------------| | @depress-org/depress | Main CLI | | @depress-org/core | Shared types | | @depress-org/wp-migrate | Migration engine |

License

MIT © depress-org