Over the last year or so, my development workflow has changed quite dramatically.
Now to be clear, this isn’t me moving away from Magento, Shopify or backend application development. The majority of my day-to-day work still revolves around ecommerce platforms, integrations, Laravel applications and operational systems.
Magento in particular still makes enormous sense for the right businesses and Laravel remains one of the most productive backend frameworks I’ve worked with.
What’s changed more is how I approach smaller brochure websites, content-driven sites and marketing websites where the operational overhead of traditional CMS platforms increasingly feels unnecessary.
After spending years largely in management and consultancy roles, I found myself slowly returning to building things again properly. That naturally led me down the rabbit hole of modern frontend workflows, deployment platforms and trying to figure out what actually makes sense operationally in 2026.
At first, I resisted a lot of it.
I come from a background heavily rooted in PHP, Magento and more traditional server-rendered applications. The modern Javascript ecosystem initially felt fragmented, over-engineered and exhausting to keep up with. Every week there seemed to be a new framework, deployment platform or runtime that was supposedly changing everything.
But after spending time experimenting with different approaches, I’ve gradually found myself moving towards much more modern, static-first workflows for certain types of projects.
Not because it’s trendy.
Because operationally, it simply feels better.
The WordPress problem
Now before anyone sharpens the pitchforks, this isn’t a “WordPress is dead” post either.
WordPress still powers a huge portion of the web and remains incredibly useful in the right situations. I still work with WordPress regularly and there are scenarios where it remains absolutely the correct tool for the job.
But for smaller brochure websites, content-driven sites and marketing websites, I’ve increasingly found the traditional Wordpress workflow frustrating.
Not necessarily because of frontend performance either.
Mostly because of the operational overhead.
Plugins. Plugin updates. Plugin conflicts. Page builders. Slow admin. Bloated themes. Security patching. Caching layers. Backups. Visual builders generating mountains of unnecessary markup.
Even modern WordPress setups can begin feeling sluggish under real-world conditions once you start layering enough functionality into them.
Ironically, it often isn’t the frontend performance that bothers me most anymore.
It’s the backend experience.
Waiting for admin screens to load. Navigating sluggish page builders. Constant plugin maintenance. The overall feeling of heaviness.
When you spend all day inside these systems, those little delays and frustrations start adding up surprisingly quickly.
Trying to find a middle ground
Initially I started experimenting with Laravel again.
Laravel still feels fantastic to work with. The ecosystem is incredibly mature now and tools like Filament have made spinning up polished admin panels absurdly fast compared to where PHP development was years ago.
For more complex applications, portals, ecommerce integrations and operational systems, Laravel still makes enormous sense to me.
I experimented with:
- Laravel and Markdown
- Laravel and Filament
- headless CMS approaches
- Astro with Contentful
- static site workflows
- hybrid frontend/backend setups
I also spent time looking at:
- Next.js
- Nuxt
- Rails
- Go
- various deployment platforms
Partly out of curiosity and partly because I genuinely wanted to reassess how I build websites now compared to 10 years ago.
The realisation: simplicity matters more than ever
The biggest thing I’ve realised is that I care far more about operational simplicity now than I used to.
Not just developer experience.
Operational experience.
Things like:
- deployment simplicity
- maintainability
- hosting costs
- security surface area
- backend responsiveness
- Git workflows
- rollback simplicity
- development speed
- content workflows
matter enormously once you’re managing multiple projects or working commercially.
A fast frontend is great.
But a fast workflow matters just as much.
Why Astro clicked for me
Astro was probably the first frontend framework that genuinely clicked for me.
Not because it felt revolutionary.
Because it felt calm.
The content-first approach made sense immediately. Markdown feels incredibly natural for content publishing and Astro’s component structure feels far more approachable to me than some heavily client-rendered frontend frameworks.
For brochure websites and content-driven sites, the workflow feels extremely efficient.
You get:
- extremely fast frontend performance
- static output
- minimal Javascript by default
- clean component architecture
- straightforward deployment
- very low hosting overhead
without constantly fighting the framework itself.
The frontend performance improvements are also immediately noticeable.
Sites simply feel lighter.
Why headless CMS workflows started making more sense
One thing I quickly realised though was that purely markdown-driven workflows aren’t always practical for every client project.
For personal projects and developer-focused sites, markdown feels fantastic but many brochure websites and marketing sites still require straightforward client editing capabilities without needing developers involved for every content change.
That’s where combining Astro with headless CMS platforms like Contentful started making far more sense to me.
That hybrid approach feels like a much cleaner balance operationally.
You retain the benefits of:
- extremely fast frontend performance
- static output
- simplified deployment workflows
- lower hosting overhead
- reduced maintenance
- improved security
while still giving clients a familiar content editing experience without the weight and operational overhead of a traditional WordPress setup.
For smaller marketing websites in particular, that workflow has started feeling significantly more efficient to me than maintaining increasingly bloated CMS installations and plugin ecosystems.
The separation between content management and frontend delivery also feels architecturally cleaner long-term.
Tailwind surprised me
I originally hated Tailwind.
I thought it looked horrible.
Massive unreadable class strings everywhere. No separation of concerns. Completely against how I’d structured CSS for years.
But after forcing myself to use it properly for a while, I eventually understood why developers love it.
The speed difference is difficult to ignore.
Once the mental model clicks, building interfaces becomes dramatically faster. I spend far less time context-switching between files and far less time fighting CSS specificity issues compared to older workflows.
I still understand why some developers dislike it, but operationally it’s become hard to argue against.
I still don’t love Javascript
I still don’t particularly enjoy Javascript culture.
The ecosystem can still feel exhausting. Tooling moves extremely quickly. Framework churn is constant. There’s still a tendency towards unnecessary complexity.
But Typescript changed my opinion more than I expected.
Not because I suddenly fell in love with frontend development but because stronger typing, better tooling and editor integration make modern workflows feel significantly safer and easier to maintain.
Modern frontend tooling also feels far more manageable once you stop trying to chase every trend simultaneously.
Deployment workflows changed everything
This is probably the biggest shift for me overall.
Platforms like:
- Cloudflare Pages
- AWS Amplify
- Vercel
have made deployment workflows dramatically simpler compared to many traditional hosting environments.
Git-based deployments feel fantastic operationally.
Push changes to Git. Automatic builds run. Deployments happen automatically. Rollback if needed.
Done.
No FTP. No manually moving files around. No fragile hosting setups. No wondering what changed on production.
The overall workflow feels cleaner, safer and considerably faster.
Hosting suddenly became incredibly cheap
One thing that’s genuinely surprised me is how cost-effective static-first hosting can be.
For brochure websites and content-driven projects, hosting costs can become almost negligible compared to traditional server infrastructure.
Once you remove:
- large databases
- bloated CMS layers
- plugin ecosystems
- constantly running PHP processes
you suddenly end up with:
- simpler hosting
- lower attack surfaces
- fewer moving parts
- dramatically improved frontend performance
That operational simplicity is becoming increasingly appealing to me for smaller projects.
I still think Laravel and PHP are fantastic
Ironically, this whole process has actually made me appreciate PHP more, not less.
Modern PHP with Laravel feels incredibly productive for the right types of applications.
Magento still makes enormous sense for complex ecommerce operations. Laravel still makes sense for custom applications and integrations. Shopify still makes sense for many retailers wanting speed and operational simplicity.
But I’ve also become much more aware that not every website needs:
- a full CMS
- heavy backend infrastructure
- dynamic rendering everywhere
- complex deployment pipelines
Sometimes a static-first frontend paired with lightweight APIs and a headless CMS simply makes far more sense operationally.
Final thoughts
I don’t think there’s a perfect stack anymore.
Everything involves trade-offs.
But after years working heavily with Magento, WordPress and more traditional backend systems, I’ve gradually found myself moving towards workflows that prioritise:
- simplicity
- maintainability
- deployment speed
- frontend performance
- operational efficiency
more than ever before for smaller websites and brochure-style projects.
Ironically, returning to development after years in management probably changed my perspective quite a lot. I’m less interested in chasing trends now and far more interested in workflows that feel stable, productive and commercially sensible long-term.
I still use PHP heavily. I still think Laravel is excellent. I still think WordPress has its place. I still spend most of my time working within ecommerce systems and integrations.
But for many modern brochure websites and content-focused projects, combining static-first frameworks like Astro with headless CMS platforms and modern deployment workflows has started feeling like a much more efficient way to build websites overall.