The technical requirements for MakeStaticSite are not demanding. Beyond the use of a computer with an Internet connection, the main requirement is that the operating system needs to support GNU Bash, preferably at least version 4. This is standard for GNU Linux, whereas macOS supplies version 3.2, which works, but we recommend installing a more recent version in parallel, using a package manager such as Homebrew. For MS Windows options include the Windows Subsystem for Linux or a virtual machine such as VirtualBox running a Linux guest.

MakeStaticSite also depends on GNU Wget and rsync, for which the latest versions are recommended (following the security advisory CVE-2024-10524, for Wget this should be at least 1.25). Use with WordPress sites also benefits from WP-CLI, which is a command line interface for executing tasks that are typically carried out through the dashboard; and refinement of HTML output for better conformance with W3C standards is provided by HTML Tidy. Otherwise, there are few dependencies beyond what the shell already provides.

The computer itself is typically one you use at home or at work, but might also be with a hosting provider or in the Cloud, though in these cases there may be limitations in the operating system components and what commands you can run; for example, Wget might not be installed or the version installed might be old. The Internet connectivity to remote machines also needs to be considered.

Please note that the system is not designed for Wget2, though it would be useful to support that in future.

Assuming your computer satisfies these basic technical requirements, you are ready to download and install the software.