Joe Forrest: writingEssays by Joe Forrest (J.D. Forrest).https://joeforrest.com/writing/2026-05-31T00:00:00ZJoe Forresthttps://joeforrest.com/about/Why I tore the CMS out and went statichttps://joeforrest.com/writing/why-i-went-static/2026-05-31T00:00:00Z2026-05-31T00:00:00ZWhy I pulled WordPress out and went static: the design tax and the maintenance tax, and what one person gets back by building plain pages instead.<p>For years the answer to "I need a website" was the same: stand up WordPress, fight the theme until it looked like the thing in my head, then spend the rest of the year keeping plugins from breaking each other.</p>
<p>This post exists because I stopped doing that.</p>
<h2>The two taxes</h2>
<p>WordPress charges a design tax and a maintenance tax. The design tax is the editor sitting between you and the actual markup, so matching a custom layout means wrestling an abstraction instead of writing the page you already drew. The maintenance tax is PHP, a database, updates, and a security surface you never asked for.</p>
<p>For one person, both are pure drag.</p>
<h2>What replaced it</h2>
<p>A folder of markdown and a build step. I write the post, a generator turns it into the design, and it deploys as plain files. No database. No login. Nothing to patch at 2am.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The site you are reading was published by pasting a draft and running one command.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The design didn't get worse. It got <em>exactly</em> what I drew, because there's nothing in the way of the HTML anymore.</p>
<h2>What I kept</h2>
<ul>
<li>The look. The mockup became the template, verbatim.</li>
<li>The speed. Static files on a CDN are about as fast as the web gets.</li>
<li>The ownership. It's a git repo. It's mine. It can't be locked behind anyone's dashboard.</li>
</ul>
<p>If you want one of these, the contact link is at the bottom of every page.</p>
The paste-and-publish loophttps://joeforrest.com/writing/the-paste-and-publish-loop/2026-05-28T00:00:00Z2026-05-28T00:00:00ZThe whole publishing workflow in four steps: write in plain markdown, drop it in a folder, the build runs, the page is live in the site design.<p>Here is the entire publishing workflow now.</p>
<ol>
<li>I write a post, anywhere, in plain markdown.</li>
<li>It lands in the <code>posts</code> folder.</li>
<li>The build runs.</li>
<li>The page is live, in the site's design, with the index updated.</li>
</ol>
<p>No editor. No blocks. No "now switch it to the right category and set the featured image and pick a template." The file <em>is</em> the post.</p>
<h2>Why this matters for the flywheel</h2>
<p>Friction is the enemy of a publishing habit. Every step between "I had a thought" and "it's on the site" is a place to quit. Cutting that path to four steps means the thing actually gets written and shipped, which is the only version that moves the needle.</p>
<p>This is the proof of concept. If it feels right, the rest of the network rolls over the same way.</p>