Why we moved our studio's website from WordPress to Astro
Discover how moving from WordPress to Astro.js transformed our web development studio’s site, offering faster performance, reduced costs, and greater flexibility with modern tools like Markdown for content management
At HOW, we pride ourselves on staying ahead of the curve with the latest technologies. So, when it came to revamping our own website, we decided to move from the tried-and-tested WordPress platform to a more modern, lightweight, and flexible solution: Astro.js. The transition has opened up a world of possibilities, making our website faster, easier to manage, and more cost-effective. Here’s why making the switch to Astro.js was a game-changer for us, and why it could be for your business too.
Why we left WordPress
WordPress has been the go-to CMS for years, and with good reason. It’s highly customizable, comes with thousands of themes and plugins, and is supported by a massive community. But as our studio grew, we realized that the very features that made WordPress powerful were also limiting us in some key areas.
Here are some of the challenges we faced with WordPress:
- Heavy and slow: With plugins, themes, and the default WordPress backend, our site was becoming bloated. Page load times increased, affecting our SEO and user experience.
- High hosting costs: Hosting a dynamic WordPress site can get expensive, especially if you’re handling significant traffic or using managed hosting services.
- Plugin Overload: We found ourselves installing and maintaining numerous plugins, each adding overhead and increasing potential security vulnerabilities.
- Limited flexibility: WordPress is great for blogging and basic websites, but when we needed more control over how we structure our pages, workflows, and integrations, we hit some roadblocks.
Why Astro.js?
Enter Astro, a modern static site generator that allowed us to break free from these limitations. Astro provides a streamlined, performance-first framework that’s perfect for static content. Here are some of the key reasons why we chose Astro for our website rebuild.
1. Lightning-fast performance
Astro excels at building static sites, and static equals speed. One of Astro’s standout features is its island architecture, which only loads JavaScript where it’s needed. By default, Astro sends zero JavaScript to the client, meaning our pages load faster and users get a snappier experience. Compared to WordPress’s dynamic content loading, the difference was night and day.
With Astro, we generate static HTML for our pages, which means they load almost instantly for our visitors. Plus, we’re no longer worried about PHP or database queries slowing things down.
2. Markdown for content
One of the most exciting shifts was moving to Markdown for our content management. In WordPress, content was managed through a bulky admin interface, which wasn’t always the most intuitive or developer-friendly. Now, we write all our content — including blog posts, service pages, and portfolio projects — using Markdown files.
This switch to Markdown gave us:
- Simplicity: Markdown is plain text, making it easy for both developers and non-developers to write content.
- Version control: Now, our entire site, including content, is tracked in Git, allowing us to easily collaborate, track changes, and roll back when needed.
- Separation of content and layout: With Astro, we define the layout of our pages in reusable components and keep content separate. This modular approach made updating and maintaining the site much easier.
3. Cost-effective hosting
One of the biggest pain points with WordPress was the ongoing hosting costs. With a dynamic WordPress site, you need to pay for a server that can handle PHP processing, MySQL databases, and sometimes even a content delivery network (CDN) for speed. This quickly adds up, especially if you’re using managed WordPress hosting services.
With Astro, our site is now a static site, meaning it can be hosted anywhere — even on free or low-cost platforms like GitHub Pages, Netlify, or Vercel. We no longer need to worry about complex server configurations or scaling issues as traffic grows.
4. Developer flexibility
Astro is framework-agnostic, meaning we can mix and match components from different front-end frameworks like React, Vue, or Svelte, and even plain HTML. This flexibility allows us to build exactly what we need without being locked into one ecosystem.
Additionally, Astro’s simple and modern architecture allowed us to integrate with other tools and services easily. Need to pull in data from an API? No problem. Want to add dynamic features on top of the static site? Astro lets you sprinkle interactivity without bloating the entire site.
5. Maintenance, security and scalability
With WordPress, there was a constant need to update plugins, themes, and the WordPress core itself to prevent security vulnerabilities. These updates often led to compatibility issues, causing parts of the site to break or slow down. Since Astro generates static files, there’s no backend to maintain, and no updates to worry about. This drastically reduces our time spent on maintenance.
One major advantage of moving to a static site is that there’s no server-side code running on the site, which significantly reduces security risks. Since there’s no database or backend to be attacked, we’ve effectively eliminated common vulnerabilities like SQL injections, brute force attacks, and other security concerns that come with WordPress.
Astro’s build-first approach makes it easy to scale. As our site grows, Astro continues to generate lightweight pages that are fast and easy to deploy. And because Astro is a forward-looking platform that embraces modern development techniques, we feel confident that it’s a future-proof solution for our needs.
The result: a faster, more manageable site (and nicer too!)
Since migrating to Astro.js, our site has never been faster, easier to update, or cheaper to run. We’ve streamlined our workflow by using Markdown, slashed our hosting costs by moving to static site hosting, and significantly reduced the amount of time we spend on maintenance. Most importantly, we’ve gained full control over our website’s structure, design, and content, allowing us to continue to push the boundaries in web development.
If you’re a web development studio or business relying on WordPress, consider taking the leap to Astro.js. It just might open up a world of possibilities for you, too.
Interested in switching to Astro.js? Reach out to our team, and let’s discuss how we can optimize your site for performance, flexibility, and scalability!
