Why We Ditched WordPress for Plain PHP (And What It Means for Your SEO)

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For years, WordPress has been the undisputed king of content management systems (CMS). It’s easy to use, has a vast ecosystem of plugins, and endless customisation options. From fledgling bloggers to established businesses, millions have used WordPress for their first website development project. We at Kode Digital have favoured WordPress for a long time, too, as it offered a seemingly straightforward path to getting a website up and running quickly.

Recently, however, we embarked on a monumental journey – moving a client’s extensive website – hundreds of pages and blog posts – from its seemingly robust WordPress foundation to a leaner PHP platform. This wasn’t a decision made lightly. It was strategic, born out of frustrating performance issues that were not only crippling user experience (UX) but also severely hindering the site’s search engine optimisation (SEO) potential.

WordPress remains an incredibly powerful tool for many. However, this is an honest and in-depth account of why, for our client, the costs of convenience began to outweigh the benefits, and why a full re-platforming to plain PHP became a necessity. If your website development is struggling with speed, and you’re scratching your head wondering why, this story might resonate deeply with you.

Elementor and Plugins: The Source of The Problem

Our client’s journey with WordPress began, like many, with the adoption of popular tools for rapid development. Elementor, a widely used page builder, was the cornerstone of their site’s design. On the surface, Elementor offers incredible visual control, allowing non-developers to create stunning layouts with drag-and-drop simplicity. Coupled with a myriad of other functional plugins for everything – from contact forms to e-commerce features, the website quickly grew in complexity and functionality.

Despite featuring only a single large banner image and no video content, the homepage began taking an excruciatingly long time to load – 30 seconds.

Not a huge time gap, but in terms of website responsiveness in today’s fast-paced digital world, 30 seconds is an eternity.

Users, especially mobile users, have the patience of a goldfish. A load time like that doesn’t just annoy them; it sends them fleeing back to the search results page faster than you can say “bounce rate.”

Imagine waiting half a minute for a website development to appear. Would you stick around? Most people wouldn’t. This wasn’t just a minor inconvenience; it was a fundamental breakdown in user-friendly website design. And what’s bad for UX is almost invariably bad for SEO.

The Fight Against Website Design Bloat

When we first identified the abysmal load times, our immediate reaction was to employ every WordPress optimisation trick in the book.

These included:

Dequeuing Unnecessary JavaScript (JS): We meticulously went through the site, identifying and attempting to prevent scripts from loading on pages where they weren’t needed.
Deferring and Asynchronously Loading JS: We experimented with methods to load JavaScript files after the main content, preventing them from blocking the initial page render.
Deactivating Unnecessary Plugins: A thorough audit revealed some plugins that were either redundant or no longer actively used. We deactivated them, hoping to lighten the load.
Installing Caching Plugins: We implemented robust caching solutions to serve static versions of pages, reducing server processing time for repeat visitors.
Optimising Images: All images were compressed and properly sized, ensuring they weren’t adding excessive weight.
Leveraging a CDN (Content Delivery Network): We utilised a CDN to distribute static assets globally, aiming to minimise latency for users worldwide.

While some of these measures yielded marginal improvements, the core problem persisted. The website development process remained sluggish, unresponsive, and fundamentally flawed in its performance metrics. It became clear that the issue wasn’t just about minor tweaks; it was deeply ingrained how WordPress development had been constructed.

The “Nuclear Option”: Embracing Plain PHP

After countless hours spent debugging, optimising, and tearing our hair out over the website development process, we at Kode Digital were down to our last option. The only viable path forward for the client’s website development was a complete re-platforming. The decision was made to convert the entire website, page by page, blog by blog, to plain PHP.

This was not a decision taken lightly. The sheer scale of the task was daunting – hundreds of pages and an equally large number of blog posts, each requiring manual conversion, meticulous testing, and careful redirection management to preserve existing SEO value. It was a massive undertaking, consuming significant time and resources.

But why plain PHP? The answer boils down to one fundamental, non-negotiable website development step that WordPress could not provide: absolute control over assets.

The “Hard to Control Assets” Conundrum

The main problem with WordPress development and many of its contemporary page builders and plugins was that when building with WordPress, especially one relying heavily on a page builder like Elementor and a multitude of third-party plugins, you are essentially importing pre-packaged functionalities. Each plugin and page builder module comes with its own set of JavaScript files, CSS stylesheets, and, often, fonts and images.

WordPress has an enqueueing system that is designed to manage these assets. In theory, it’s a good system, allowing developers to register properly and load scripts and styles. In practice, however, when you combine dozens of plugins, each adding its own JS and CSS, the enqueueing system becomes overwhelmed.

Here’s why it leads to a lack of control and severe performance issues:

Bloated Codebase: Every plugin, even if you only use a fraction of its features, often loads its entire library of JS and CSS. Elementor, for instance, is incredibly powerful, but its core JavaScript and CSS footprint is substantial, even for simple pages. When combined with other heavy plugins, the total amount of code that needs to be downloaded by a user’s browser becomes astronomical.
Redundant Loading: Multiple plugins might rely on the same core libraries (like jQuery), but instead of loading them once, they might load their own versions, leading to redundant script requests and execution.
Render-Blocking Resources: Many of these scripts and stylesheets are loaded synchronously in the of the HTML, meaning the browser cannot render any content until these files are fully downloaded and parsed. This is the primary cause of slow “First Contentful Paint” (FCP) and “Largest Contentful Paint” (LCP) – critical Core Web Vitals metrics.
Lack of Granular Control: While you can attempt to dequeue scripts, it often becomes a cat-and-mouse game. It’s difficult to know which script belongs to which specific feature, and dequeuing the wrong one can break functionality across your site. Page builders, in particular, often generate inline CSS and JS that is hard to manage or optimise externally.
Dependency Hell: Plugins often depend on each other or specific versions of core libraries. An update to one plugin can break another or introduce new performance issues, making maintenance a constant battle.
Unused CSS/JS: Your website might only use a small fraction of the styles or scripts loaded by a large plugin or theme, but the entire codebase is still delivered to the user’s browser, wasting bandwidth and processing power.

With plain PHP, we dictate every single asset that is loaded. We include only the CSS and JavaScript that are absolutely necessary for each specific page or component. This gives us surgical precision over the codebase, resulting in significantly lighter pages and lightning-fast load times. There’s no hidden bloat, no unnecessary scripts running in the background, and complete transparency.

The Unseen Costs of Convenience: Performance, UX, and SEO

The ramifications of poor website development are far-reaching. They directly impact your bottom line and your ability to rank in search engines.

Page Load Speed: Every extra second a page takes to load increases the bounce rate exponentially. For SEO, Google explicitly states that page speed is a ranking factor, especially with the advent of Core Web Vitals.
User Experience (UX): A fast website design feels professional, reliable, and user-friendly. A slow one feels amateurish and frustrating. Good UX leads to longer time on site, more page views, and higher conversion rates. Google heavily prioritises user experience, and slow loading actively harms it.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO): This is where the true long-term damage lies.
- Core Web Vitals: Google’s set of metrics (Largest Contentful Paint, First Input Delay, Cumulative Layout Shift) directly measure loading performance, interactivity, and visual stability. A JS-heavy, slow WordPress site will almost certainly fail Core Web Vitals, signalling to Google that it provides a poor user experience. Websites with good Core Web Vitals scores are more likely to rank higher.
- Crawl Budget: For large website development projects, Google has a “crawl budget” – a finite amount of resources it allocates to crawling your site. If your pages are slow to load, Googlebot spends more time and resources fetching each page, potentially crawling fewer of your valuable pages. This can delay indexing new content or updates.
- Ranking Signals (Indirect): While speed is a direct ranking factor, a poor UX due to slow speed indirectly affects rankings. High bounce rates (users leaving quickly), low time on site, and fewer pages visited signal to Google that users are not finding value on your site. This can lead to a gradual decline in rankings.
- Mobile-First Indexing: Google primarily uses the mobile version of your site for indexing and ranking. Mobile users are even more sensitive to slow loading times due to varying network conditions. A sluggish WordPress mobile site will be severely penalised.

The website migration to plain PHP was an investment in long-term SEO health. By stripping away the bloat, we were able to deliver a website that loads in under 2 seconds, drastically improving Core Web Vitals scores and signalling to Google that this is a fast, user-friendly, and authoritative resource.

Nuance: Is WordPress Still Viable?

Having gone through all of this, you might expect us to conclude that WordPress isn’t a good choice. However, when used correctly, website development with WordPress remains an incredibly powerful and accessible CMS. We even continue to use WordPress for many of our small website development projects.

So, when is WordPress advisable?

For non-technical users who need to manage content frequently: WordPress’s intuitive backend, especially for managing blog posts, pages, and media, is unparalleled. If you need regular website development and don’t have a dedicated developer on staff, a CMS like WordPress is often the most practical solution.
For smaller websites with simpler needs: If your website doesn’t require complex functionality or hundreds of pages, and you’re judicious about plugin selection, WordPress can still be very performant.

However, the critical takeaway from our experience is this:

It is still advisable to use WordPress, but try to get a developer who really understands WordPress website development.

This is where many website development projects go wrong. There are a lot of freelance or amateur developers out there who, in an effort to save time and offer cheaper rates, rely heavily on page builders like Elementor and indiscriminately install numerous functional plugins. While page builders offer quick visual results, they often come at a significant performance cost due to their JS-heavy nature. When combined with some other functional plugins, this cocktail can cripple your site’s performance, user experience, and, ultimately, its SEO.

A skilled WordPress developer knows:

When to use a page builder and when to build custom: They understand that for optimal performance, hand-coding specific sections or templates might be necessary instead of relying on a drag-and-drop interface for everything.
How to optimise themes and plugins: They know how to dequeue unnecessary scripts, optimise images, implement proper caching strategies, and minimise HTTP requests.
To prioritise performance from the ground up: They build with speed and efficiency in mind, rather than treating performance as an afterthought.
To leverage WordPress’s core strengths: They use WordPress for its excellent content management capabilities while avoiding common pitfalls that lead to bloat.

Our journey from bloated WordPress development to a lean, plain PHP solution was a painful but ultimately necessary one. It underscored the critical importance of foundational website performance and the hidden costs of convenience. If you’re considering a new website or revamping an old one, think about the tools and expertise you’re bringing to the table. Your users and Google will thank you for a website that loads in a blink.

At Kode Digital, our website development team comprises experts in a range of platforms and website builders, including WordPress and CSS. We have helped dozens of clients build and update websites to run smoothly and draw in the right crowd. Want to know how we can help you? Reach out to us today and find out what we can do for you.

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