Custom WordPress websites for scalability: the perfect plugin selection and tech stack.

WordPress is never just WordPress. The open-source nature of WordPress, along with its supreme flexibility and ability to customise as you need has seen it grow to be the world’s most popular CMS. The global adoption means that there’s a plugin out there for almost any function you can think of.
This is not always a good thing. There’s plenty of poorly developed or unsupported plugins out there, which can quickly equate to costly fixes, refactoring or rebuilding. Or in a worst-case scenario, a website that has to be turfed soon after build as it simply can’t be upgraded. Unfortunately this is a regular occurrence. Here at Mainstay we’ve had to rebuild many legacy sites handed to us by clients from former developers.

Performance, scalability, lowered risk

This article outlines our plugins of choice, and the wider tech-stack we use. As we build and support sites for scalability (and security and performance), we undertake many custom WordPress builds – and this is always our preference over a site using an off-the-shelf theme or template. And by custom, we mean working with a base theme to develop the user interface based on designs from scratch. It also means we aim to minimise the number of plugins we use down to a core selection.

There are some compelling reasons for custom WordPress builds:

Purpose-built means reduced code, cleaner code which in turn means site performance.
 Less plugins means reduced code bloat – again performance and lowers risks of breakages in maintenance and updates.
 Less plugins means less maintenance, and fewer risk of vulnerabilities
 No need for attempting to retro-fit functionality to a templated theme (which never works well)
 Read-to-scale – purpose-built with a lean plugin and code base sets you up for scalability

WordPress is never just WordPress. The open-source nature of WordPress, along with its supreme flexibility and ability to customise as you need has seen it grow to be the world’s most popular CMS. The global adoption means that there’s a plugin out there for almost any function you can think of.
This is not always a good thing. There’s plenty of poorly developed or unsupported plugins out there, which can quickly equate to costly fixes, refactoring or rebuilding. Or in a worst-case scenario, a website that has to be turfed soon after build as it simply can’t be upgraded. Unfortunately this is a regular occurrence. Here at Mainstay we’ve had to rebuild many legacy sites handed to us by clients from former developers.

Performance, scalability, lowered risks

This article outlines our plugins of choice, and the wider tech-stack we use. As we build and support sites for scalability (and security and performance), we undertake many custom WordPress builds – and this is always our preference over a site using an off-the-shelf theme or template. And by custom, we mean working with a base theme to develop the user interface based on designs from scratch. It also means we aim to minimise the number of plugins we use down to a core selection.

There are some compelling reasons for custom WordPress builds:

Purpose-built means reduced code, cleaner code which in turn means site performance.
 Less plugins means reduced code bloat – again performance and lowers risks of breakages in maintenance and updates.
 Less plugins means less maintenance, and fewer risk of vulnerabilities
 No need for attempting to retro-fit functionality to a templated theme (which never works well)
 Read-to-scale – purpose-built with a lean plugin and code base sets you up for scalability

WordPress is never just WordPress. The open-source nature of WordPress, along with its supreme flexibility and ability to customise as you need has seen it grow to be the world’s most popular CMS. The global adoption means that there’s a plugin out there for almost any function you can think of.
This is not always a good thing. There’s plenty of poorly developed or unsupported plugins out there, which can quickly equate to costly fixes, refactoring or rebuilding. Or in a worst-case scenario, a website that has to be turfed soon after build as it simply can’t be upgraded. Unfortunately this is a regular occurrence. Here at Mainstay we’ve had to rebuild many legacy sites handed to us by clients from former developers.

Performance, scalability, and lowered risks

This article outlines our plugins of choice, and the wider tech-stack we use. As we build and support sites for scalability (and security and performance), we undertake many custom WordPress builds – and this is always our preference over a site using an off-the-shelf theme or template. And by custom, we mean working with a base theme to develop the user interface based on designs from scratch. It also means we aim to minimise the number of plugins we use down to a core selection.

There are some compelling reasons for custom WordPress builds:

Purpose-built means reduced code, cleaner code which in turn means site performance.
 Less plugins means reduced code bloat – again performance and lowers risks of breakages in maintenance and updates.
 Less plugins means less maintenance, and fewer risk of vulnerabilities
 No need for attempting to retro-fit functionality to a templated theme (which never works well)
 Read-to-scale – purpose-built with a lean plugin and code base sets you up for scalability

Callout Section

  1. We used the firm’s International Partner Conference to stress-test the new brand
  2. We used the firm’s International Partner Conference to stress-test the new brand
  3. We used the firm’s International Partner Conference to stress-test the new brand
  4. Very important: always remember to not be a douche.