A fast website, without a heavy CMS
A website doesn’t need to be an SUV if you’re only driving to the bakery. WordPress is powerful, but if you don’t need that power, why carry it around?
Not every website needs a heavy CMS
WordPress and Drupal are well-known, powerful systems, but they carry a lot that a site rarely uses. You still pay for it: slower, more parts that can break, plugins asking for an update every other week.
That’s why I build static, with Astro. The pages sit ready as finished files and are served from a fast, global network. No database that can seize up, no plugins to keep track of, no admin login that makes a target.
What you get from it
Faster
Light pages load faster. Your visitor notices it straight away, and Google counts it.
Less that can break
No database, no plugins, no theme with a hundred settings. Fewer parts means less that can conflict or need maintaining.
Safer
No login screen and no plugins that can open a hole. There’s simply little to exploit.
An online shop, members’ area or newsroom? That can be light too.
WordPress isn’t bad, but you don’t need it for a site that has to do more. Want to sell online, give members or clients a private area or publish articles yourself every day? I build that on the same light footing. Whatever extra you need is added as a separate part, without plugins asking for updates. So the site stays fast and secure, even as it grows.
An extension like that is custom work: we look together at what the site needs to do and I build exactly that. The site you’re looking at now is an example of it: static pages, plus a Website Check that scans websites and a contact form that handles enquiries.
The proof: this site itself
jtmedia.be is built with exactly the same approach, so you don’t have to take my word for it. On a standard Lighthouse speed test for mobile, the site scores above ninety out of a hundred, with barely a dozen files loaded per page. No elaborate optimisation tricks, just the result of shipping little.
That’s the level I build your site to as well: not an empty promise, but something you can test yourself once it’s live.
