I refactored both divyendra.com and codenza.app and removed WordPress completely. The overhead, the headaches, the constant updates and plugins and security patches, the database, the backup dance. All of it. I was done maintaining it.
WordPress was fine when I needed a quick site and didn't want to think about it. But over time it became a chore. Every few months there was a core update, and then I had to check that my theme and plugins still worked. Plugins broke or went unmaintained. I worried about security: one vulnerable plugin or an outdated PHP version and the whole thing could get owned. The host had to run PHP and MySQL, which meant more moving parts and more things that could go wrong. I wasn't publishing daily or even monthly. I had a handful of pages and a few write ups. The complexity didn't match what I actually needed.
So I decided to strip it all back. I wanted static HTML and CSS, no database, no admin panel, no login. Just files. I asked Claude Opus to build both sites from scratch with a minimal look. I described the structure: a simple nav, a home page, an about, a list of write ups, individual post pages. I said I wanted it to feel clean and readable, not like a generic theme. I didn't spec every pixel. I gave direction and then iterated. "Make the nav simpler." "Less padding here." "I want the same shell on every page." It understood. The result is clean, fast, and easy to change. I can open a file, edit the text, and redeploy. No dashboard, no database dumps, no plugin conflicts. It's wild how good it is. The sites feel like me, not like a theme.
The only thing that stayed the same is the CDN. Both sites still sit behind Cloudflare. I kept it on purpose. It gives me one place to handle SSL, caching, and a bit of DDoS protection. I don't have to think about certs or whether the origin is getting hammered. Cloudflare has been reliable for me, and swapping out the origin behind it was straightforward. So I left that layer alone. Everything in front of it got replaced; the CDN stayed. If I ever move hosting again, I'll probably keep pointing the same names at Cloudflare and just change the origin. One less thing to redo.
If you're running a small personal or project site and you're tired of WordPress, try going static. You might be surprised how much you don't need. For a blog or a simple portfolio, a few HTML files and a shared stylesheet can be enough. You can always add a static site generator or a build step later if you want. But you don't have to start there.