Imran Codes

My Journey From Sluggish Site to Lightning Speed

Wordpress site score
↓
NextJS site score

As a Senior Web Developer and mentor, I live and breathe websites. So when my own site started slowing to a snail's pace, I knew it was time for an extreme makeover.

Launching my freelance and web development career seven years back, I hastily threw together a simple WordPress site. It did the job at first, but over time as I added more plugins, images, and features, the site became bloated and slow.

I didn't pay much attention initially as I was swamped with work - until Google PageSpeed Insights and GTMetrix gave my site a failing grade of 'F'! The total page load time was a glacial 13.9 seconds. Unacceptable in the age of micro-second attention spans and my extensive knowledge in the field.

I ran additional speed tests which also showed abysmal results:

  • 46% Performance Score
  • 56% Structure Score
  • 14+ second load time

No wonder my visitor bounce rate was sky-high!

As a developer, I felt ashamed and knew I had to fix this immediately. My own site did not reflect my skills or values around performance.

It was time for a lightning-fast remake!

I carefully reviewed my PageSpeed Insights results and saw a few major issues:

  • Too many plugins loading unnecessary scripts
  • Bloated images not optimized
  • No code splitting or caching
  • HTML/CSS/JS not minified

Essentially my site used none of the modern web performance best practices I preach to clients!

I considered updating my aging WordPress platform - cleaning up plugins, enabling caching, and more.

But I realized these would be temporary band-aids. WordPress has fundamental performance limits. For a truly fast, durable solution, I needed a more modern framework. My mission was simple that I had to revamp my whole site and deploy with vercel changing my A records to point to the new site.

Enter Next.js!

After working with React frameworks for years, I chose Next.js for its incredible speed and developer experience. The benefits were exactly what my site needed:

  • Server Side Rendering - Faster initial load
  • Image Optimization - Auto compression with the Next Image component
  • Code Splitting - Faster page delivery
  • File-based Routing - Leaner pages
  • API Routes - Serverless functions
  • Incremental Static Regeneration - Always fast

I dove in headfirst, recreating my entire site in Next. While a big undertaking, I kept the design simple and focused on good architecture. Also with the assistance of the best SEO content writer on the planet (ChatGPT).

The results? My site absolutely flew! PageSpeed Insights now gave me perfect scores - 100% across the board! My load time dropped from 13.9s to a mere 0.9s - well under 1 second.

The improvement was literally instant after deployment. My site now loads with crisp speed on every visit.

Beyond performance gains, Next.js provides so many other benefits:

  • Easy deployment on Vercel
  • Automatic compression/minification
  • Straightforward data fetching
  • Scaleable as my business grows

After struggling with my legacy WordPress site for so long and not having the time to revitalise it, developing in Next feels like a breath of fresh air!

While not trivial to rebuild a site from scratch, for me the long-term benefits are 100% worth it. Visitors get an extremely fast first impression that reflects my skills accurately.

If your website feels old and slow, I highly recommend exploring a modern React-based platform like Next. Don't make performance optimizations - make a leap into the future! You'll unlock speed, scalability and developer productivity.

Need help getting your site speed overhauled? Get in touch! I've been through the slow site grind and can definitely help your website reach light speed.

Let's talk and start mapping out a high speed roadmap. Your customers will thank you!

See more blogs on my site also or check out videos on the Imran Codes Youtube Channel!