What I actually build on WordPress
Three engagement types. Custom block themes for marketing sites where editors need real visual control without a page builder. Headless WordPress with Next.js or Astro fronts when content velocity matters more than editor familiarity. Performance + Core Web Vitals remediation on existing sites that have been hit by builder bloat.
Where WordPress earns the work
- Marketing sites with serious content ops — multi-author, scheduled, taxonomy-heavy.
- Membership + community sites with tiered access, BuddyBoss, or custom roles.
- Multilingual / multi-region via WPML, Polylang, or per-locale headless front-ends.
- Headless commerce with WP as the backend + Next.js + Stripe / Snipcart.
Where I’d push you elsewhere
If your site is actually a brochure with five pages and an editor who’ll change copy twice a year — Webflow or Squarespace will serve you better. WordPress earns its complexity when you’re shipping content, integrating systems, or building something the team will edit weekly.
The WordPress stack I actually use
Theme: custom block theme (FSE), no parent themes, no Elementor / Divi / WPBakery / Beaver. Plugins (audited monthly): ACF, Rank Math or SEOPress, FlyingPress or WP Rocket, ShortPixel, Fluent Forms. Hosting: Rocket.net or Kinsta with Redis, Cloudflare in front. Headless when warranted: Next.js + WPGraphQL on Vercel, Astro + REST API on Cloudflare Pages.
Common questions
Will you use Elementor / Divi / WPBakery?
No, ever. Page builders inject 200–500KB of unused CSS/JS per page, lock content into shortcodes, and make migration costs balloon. The site you’re reading right now is built without any of them on a custom block theme — same standard for every client project.
Headless or traditional WordPress?
Honest answer in 30 seconds on the call. Headless makes sense when you have React/Vue capacity, content velocity, and can afford the extra moving parts. Traditional makes sense when the team’s small, the site’s content-heavy, and editor familiarity matters. I’ve shipped both — the choice depends on you, not me.
Can you fix our existing slow WordPress site?
Usually yes. Most slow WP sites are slow for the same five reasons: page builder bloat, twenty plugins doing one thing each, an unoptimised hosting stack, no caching layer, and uncompressed images. A two-week performance engagement typically gets you from 30s LCP to under 2s without rebuilding.
