Goodbye, WordPress: why I rebuilt my site with Nuxt

My website mactepjp.com ran on WordPress for several years. I built it myself, it did its job, and for a long time I saw no reason to change anything. But over time the site fell behind what I actually do every day. So I rebuilt it from scratch with Nuxt and my own API.

Why not WordPress

Let me say it upfront: WordPress is a good tool, and I still recommend it for many projects. The problem wasn’t WordPress itself but how my needs had changed:

• Speed. The theme, a page builder and several plugins added weight that was hard to remove without a rewrite.
• Languages. The site works in Ukrainian, Russian and English. A translation plugin made this possible, but every edit turned into hunting for the right version of a page.
• Updates. Regular core and plugin updates and constant thoughts about security took time I wanted to spend on real work.
• Fit with my stack. Every day I work with Vue, Nuxt and Node.js, yet I was maintaining my own site in a different world.

What I ended up with

The new site has two parts. The Nuxt 3 frontend renders pages on the server, so they open fast and are easy for search engines to index. The backend is a small Express API with Prisma and PostgreSQL that stores the portfolio, blog, services and site texts.

Multilingual support is built into the data model itself: every record has translations for three languages, and if one is missing the site falls back to Ukrainian. No plugins and no duplicated pages.

The best part is the admin panel. It is made exactly for my tasks: add a portfolio project, write an article, update my skills or check messages from the contact form. Nothing extra, and everything opens in a second.

What it gave me

• Pages became lighter and load noticeably faster.
• I fully control the code, design and data, with no dependence on third-party plugins.
• Adding a new language or section takes a few hours of work instead of searching for the right extension.
• The site finally reflects how I work today: a modern stack, animations and a thought-through structure.

Should you move too?

Not necessarily. If your WordPress site is fast, you edit content easily and updates don’t get in your way, there is no point in rewriting it. But if the site has become part of a product, needs custom logic or several languages without compromises, a custom solution may turn out to be simpler in the long run. That is exactly what happened in my case.