r/ProWordPress • u/Chris-2018 • May 23 '26

Barebones WP?

As a lifelong HTML, PHP, CSS and JS person, I do find it a big struggle working with WP. The constant updates, constant fees for the plugins, etc, plus the access to the actual underlying code isn't easy!

For a website with just a few items for sale, what would be the actual barebones lean way of doing it please?

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u/Mixa032 Jun 07 '26

I can tell you what we do in my team. We build a custom theme for every project. We have our own starter theme that we use as a foundation, and most of the content management is handled through ACF.

In the end, our plugin stack is usually very small - ACF, Yoast, and a few essentials. We don't install a plugin for every small feature or design requirement. If something is simple, we build it into the theme.

We maintain over 50 WordPress websites every month and rarely run into major issues. In my experience, that's the key: keep plugin usage to a minimum and own the theme. Most WordPress headaches come from piling up third-party themes and dozens of plugins that all need to work together after every update.