Major Staq Upgrade and AI Website Builder Vision

 

We’ve been busy behind the scenes—rebuilding, refining, and rolling out upgrades across the entire Staq platform. This post is a quick summary of what’s new, with links to deeper dives where needed.

 

Infrastructure Upgrade (Now Live)

We’ve rolled out a major infrastructure upgrade delivering faster execution, improved caching, and better overall performance—without requiring any changes to your sites.

👉 Read the full breakdown:

PHP 8.5 Now Available

PHP 8.5 is now supported on Staq.

• Slight performance improvements over PHP 8.2 (nothing dramatic, but every bit counts)
• Best practice to stay on the latest version
• Built-in compatibility tester ensures your codebase is safe before upgrading

👉 See this guide on how to upgrade to PHP 8.5

Image Optimisation (Rebuilt)

We’ve completely rethought how image optimisation works:

• Retired the previous AWS-based optimisation system
• Now compress images and generate WebP directly on the server
• Original images are stored safely in S3

With Cloudflare or Staq CDN (powered by AWS CloudFront), you now get a cleaner, more efficient setup for performance and bandwidth reduction—without hidden trade-offs.

👉 See this guide on how to optimize images

New Auto-Heal System

Our upgraded Auto-Heal is built for modern traffic patterns, including AI-driven surges.

It detects issues in real time, isolates threats, and restores performance within seconds—keeping your sites online and stable when it matters most.

AI Debug Tool

Debugging just got a whole lot easier.

Inside the Staq dashboard, you can now click “Debug with AI” and get:

• A plain-English explanation of PHP errors
• Step-by-step guidance on how to fix the issue
• Clear actions you can take directly within Staq

No more digging through logs trying to interpret stack traces.

AI Website Builder (Coming Soon)

We’re building something big for agencies. Soon, you’ll be able to:

• Generate full websites using AI
• Build directly in your preferred page builder
• Share with clients (fully white-labelled)
• Collect feedback with pinned comments
• Deploy instantly into Staq with all pages built natively inside your page builder’s widgets

👉 See the current progress and full vision

New UK Region (London)

We’ve launched a new AWS region in London, giving you the ability to host websites closer to your European users.

This can help with data residency requirements under General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)—but note:

• Hosting in the UK/EU helps with compliance
  It does not automatically make your site GDPR-compliant

Compliance still depends on how you handle user data, cookies, and consent—but infrastructure location is now one less blocker.

Overhauled Staq MU Plugin

We’ve redesigned the Staq must-use plugin inside WordPress.

• Cleaner, more intuitive UI
• Better visibility into platform features
• Improved experience for both standard and white-labelled setups

This aligns with our broader infrastructure rebuild—and it’s just the beginning.

To check it out, log into any WordPress site hosted on Staq and click the Staq Hosting plugin (or if it’s white labelled, you’ll see your brand). Check it out!

What’s Next

With the foundation now rebuilt, our focus is shifting to the next phase:

👉 A fully modernised Staq dashboard experience
👉 Even deeper automation for agencies
👉 Continued investment in AI-powered workflows

If you’re trialling Staq for the first time, this is the perfect moment to see what the platform can really do.

 

Till the next one,

Emmanuel

Co-founder & CEO