The right tool for each client

The question I hear most is whether React is worth it. For me the question is a different one: what the site has to achieve and who will use it afterwards. The answer changes from project to project, which is why my site and my clients’ sites are not built with the same thing.

My site and Drakkar: Astro

What Astro gave me was speed and performance. My site does not need complex processes, so Astro was the best option: it builds pages in HTML and CSS and only sends JavaScript where something is interactive. And if one day I need a Vue or React component, I can bring it in without changing tools.

You can see it on this site. The home page, the services, the case studies and the articles load no framework at all. Vue only appears in the contact form, the FAQ and the lists you can filter, the projects and the blog. Those pieces load when they reach the screen. The site of Drakkar, the agency I run, is also custom-built in Astro.

My clients’ sites: WordPress

My clients use WordPress because of what they need. It has a faster learning curve, and their sites have processes that non-technical staff keep up to date: news, events, products. Floors For Everyone, IEP José Félix Ribas, Jean Durán y Asociados and Thamara López are built with WordPress and Elementor.

At the Ribas school, for example, the staff publish the news themselves after in-person training. I wrote about it in From WhatsApp group to website. With Astro, every news item would depend on me.

And React?

I do not use React today. I lean towards Vue for its benefits. But I do not rule it out: if I had to build a more complex system, it would be an option to consider.

The questions before choosing

Before choosing the technology I ask the client several questions: what their goals are, what results they want, what applications their site will have and who will maintain it. Those answers decide the architecture. The tool comes at the end, not the beginning.

What building everything by hand taught me

At first I worked with CodeIgniter, a very good framework for development but hard to maintain. I resisted WordPress: I wanted to build everything from scratch, in pure code. Over time I understood that in this line of work what matters is the results and the benefits the client gets from their site, not the technology underneath.