Why I Stopped Using WordPress and Never Looked Back

There's nothing wrong with WordPress — for a certain kind of project. But after years of wrestling with page builders, bloated themes, and plugin conflicts, I made a decision: every project I touch would be built from scratch with modern tools.

Here's what changed.

The breaking point

I was debugging a client's site. A contact form had stopped working. The culprit? A plugin update broke compatibility with another plugin that was injecting custom CSS that conflicted with the theme's built-in form styles.

Three layers of abstraction, zero of them mine, all of them fragile. I spent four hours fixing something that should have taken ten minutes.

That was the last WordPress project I took on.

What custom code actually gets you

When I say "custom code," I don't mean reinventing the wheel. I mean choosing the right tools for the job and writing only what's needed.

• Performance: No unused CSS from a theme you're overriding anyway. No jQuery loaded for a single animation. A typical Next.js site I build loads in under a second.
• Control: Every pixel is intentional. No fighting with a theme's opinions about spacing, typography, or color.
• Maintainability: One codebase, one framework, one deployment pipeline. When something breaks, there's one place to look.
• SEO: Server-rendered pages, proper semantic HTML, structured data — all built in from day one, not bolted on with a plugin.

The tools that make it possible

Five years ago, building a custom site for every client would have been impractical. The ecosystem has changed:

React and Next.js handle routing, server rendering, and deployment. Tailwind CSS eliminates the need for a separate design system. Vercel deploys in seconds with zero configuration. TypeScript catches bugs before they ship.

The time it takes to build a custom site is now comparable to configuring a WordPress theme — and the result is incomparably better.

Who this matters for

If you're a startup, an agency, or a business that's outgrown its template site, you don't need WordPress. You need a developer who writes code.

The upfront investment is similar. The long-term cost of ownership is lower. And the site you get is something no one else has.

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That's the trade I made: more craft, less configuration. And I haven't looked back.