Discover how I moved from WordPress and no-code nightmares to finding freedom with Astro.js. This story reveals the power of Astro.js for creating high-performance, SEO-friendly, and highly customizable marketing sites.

CMS Conf

Patchstack

Maciek Palmowski

Company Culture

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Struggling with WordPress due to plugin overload, security issues, and lack of customization, the author found Astro.js to be a superior alternative. Astro.js offers fast performance, high SEO scores, and the ability to easily create static websites with built-in i18n support and image optimization. Its flexibility allows integration with other frameworks like React and Svelte, making it a powerful tool for developers looking for a lightweight and efficient solution.

Why I Ditched WordPress for Astro.js

Struggles with No-Code WordPress Solutions

Mistakes:
<ol>
<li>
“Struggles with No-Code WordPress Solutions”
the fact that you don’t know how to code for WordPress doesn’t make it bad. actually you are lazy person and you didn’t even got to the basic resources to learn WordPress
a) <a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">https://learn.wordpress.org/</a>
b) <a href="https://wordpress.tv/" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">https://wordpress.tv/</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/lesson-plans/" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">https://learn.wordpress.org/lesson-plans/</a> &lt;- Coding and no coding tutorials 100% free from the WordPress community
</li>
<li>
Elementor is developer friendly. It means that you can create your own custom widgets and throw them inside with drag n drop
</li>
<li>
“Vulnerabilities” . THE BIGGEST LIE EVER!!!
I saw more vulnerabilities in npm packages than in WordPress. There is nothing 100% secure, no mutter the techology. 99% the resons that the most WordPress websites are vulnerable are 3
a) Most of the people are not updating the themes the plugins and the code.
b) a lot of people are buying cracked pro version plugins and themes (piracy) in very low price. 99% there are malicious payloads inside.
c) They don’t care to setup server’s firewall and to install the WordPress and other security plugins.
</li>
</ol>
And the last for developers. as all frameworks WordPress has on their developers documentation condign standards that you have to follow to build secure and efficient themes and plugins. <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/coding-standards/wordpress-coding-standards/" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">https://developer.wordpress.org/coding-standards/wordpress-coding-standards/</a>
I bet that you are so lazy that you never go to any technologies coding standards to write code with the right way. So 99% you are writing vulnerable and unefficient code.
I’m 25+ years developer. I’m coding in more than 15 languages and I expored even the very modern stuff. Even in modern frameworks in documentations you will find coding standards. Noobs never reading them unfortunately

I used Wordpress for my blog since 2015. This year, i started to write again on <a href="https://devaradise.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">my blog</a> after i migrated it to static website, first to Docusaurus, and then Astro.
When i migrated to Astro, almost all my blog pages load ~0.5s in desktop, with 95+ score in all lighthouse metrics, without much optimization effort. Astro Island architecture really hits different. I doubt i can do the same thing with Wordpress blog even with twice effort, considering my contents are mostly a long form content and rich of images.
I also cut the hosting cost for my blog, by leveraging 100% free cloudflare pages, that is also has built-in cache function. You dont need a paid hosting for static website.
I write blog post with Markdown directly in VSCode, using VSCode markdown extension to preview the post. All post metadata configured in frontmatter. When i’m done, i just need to commit and push the change to my repo. and it will automatically trigger cloudflare pages build… in less then 5 min, the post will be published.
You don’t need CMS if you are the only author of your blog.
That being said, if you’re a developer and has a blog, Astro is 100% your go-to choice. Its easier and faster to build, good developer experience, and most importantly, the performance is top-notch without doing much effort.

I also dumped Wordpress a few months ago for similar issues. I tried Astro, but it didn’t work out of the box quite like I wanted. I ended up using Hugo for SSG (I run a blog). No need for a framework other than Node to update packages. The site itself doesn’t depend on a framework though.

Even though they are totally different things, you should ditch WordPress for anything else. That being said, unless you are building the new facebook, Laravel with Vue SSR is still a much better option than Astro.

Very interesting piece. I’ll have to look into this and see how it differs for the better. Thanks!