"Can you renew my SSL certificate?"
A touring agency owner reached out with a simple request.
We tried to view the website and got a 503 error, the server couldn't handle requests.
"That happens sometimes," she said. "It'll come back up."
Everything was outdated. PHP, the programming language that powers WordPress, was four years behind. Her site ran version 7.4. The minimum recommended is now 8.3. That's years of missing security fixes.
Twenty-six plugins needed updates. Contact forms, security tools, image optimization, all outdated. Some by months. Some by years.
Her security plugin flagged 24 errors, 5 of them critical. Firewall at 64%. Scanning at 60%. The site was exposed.
The traffic log told the rest of the story: roughly 10 blocked attacks per second from all over the world. Bots probing for weaknesses in outdated software.
She Wasn't Ignoring It
She had contractors. Every year: certificate renewal, plugin updates, small fixes.
She was paying for maintenance.
The site was still broken.
Here's why.
WordPress is built on plugins. Plugins are built by independent developers. They update when they want. Or don't. Some get abandoned. Some conflict with each other. Some break when WordPress itself updates.
Keeping a WordPress site healthy means updating core, updating every plugin, checking that nothing broke, fixing what did, backing up before each change, and monitoring security logs.
That's not occasional maintenance. That's ongoing work.
Skip it, and problems pile up quietly until the site is a mess.
Her site had been "maintained" for years. Still running PHP from 2019. Still 26 outdated plugins. Still 5 critical security errors.
Maintenance without a system is just catching up.
The Translation Problem
Her business operates in three languages. The website needed pages in all three.
In WordPress, each translation was a separate page. A copy.
Change the English version? Manually update the Russian and Hebrew versions too. Copy. Paste. Hope you didn't miss anything.
She missed things. Typos in shared content. Prices that didn't match. Tour descriptions that drifted apart over time.
And every edit meant working in HTML. The code that structures web pages. She wasn't a developer. She didn't want to be one.
Why Speed Matters
Website speed isn't just about user experience. Google uses it as a ranking factor. Slower sites rank lower. Fewer people find you.
Her site scored 49 out of 100.
The images alone totaled 800 megabytes. A well-optimized site runs 5–10 megabytes total. Visitors on slow connections couldn't even load the page.
No rich snippets, those enhanced search results showing ratings, prices, or FAQs directly in Google. No sitelinks, the organized links beneath a main search result that Google generates when it understands your site structure. Hers was too messy for either.
The site was slow, insecure, and invisible.
The Alternative
We could have fixed everything. Updated PHP. Updated plugins. Patched security. Optimized images. Set up proper backups.
We quoted it.
Then we told her: starting over would be cheaper. Not with a new WordPress site. With a different approach.
A static website.
What's a Static Website?
Most websites are "dynamic." When someone visits, the server runs code, pulls from a database, assembles the page, sends it. WordPress does this on every page load.
A static website is pre-built. The pages already exist as files. The server just sends them. No code runs. No database. Nothing to break. No plugins, no PHP, no WordPress core to patch, no virtual server to manage.
She updates content often, prices change, tours get added, seasonal schedules shift. WordPress gave her a million options she didn't need. We gave her a simple admin panel with standardized content.
Every tour shows the same safety warning. Every activity shows the same booking terms. Every glacier trip shows the same equipment list. She doesn't copy-paste these anymore. They're built into the system. Add a new tour, the right warnings appear automatically.
Three languages, one source of truth. No drift.
What We Built
PageSpeed went from 49 to 95. The site loads instantly now, faster rankings, visitors who actually stay.
No plugins. No PHP versions to track. No security patches. No yearly contractor calls. Hosting dropped to $1.03/month, about a tenth of what she was paying before.
Three languages, one source. Content is linked, not copied. Change something once, it updates everywhere. And she edits in plain text now. No HTML.
WordPress: Then and Now
WordPress used to be great. Full ownership of your environment. Your server. Your data. Your code. No platform could shut you down or change the rules.
It was the best option for blogging, e-commerce, collaboration, for anyone who wanted control. That was ten years ago.
Today, many of those use cases have simpler options. Substack or Ghost for blogging. Shopify for e-commerce, it handles inventory, payments, and shipping better than WooCommerce for many teams. Notion and Google Docs for collaboration. Static sites for full ownership, with less maintenance.
WordPress still works well for one group: agencies that bill for ongoing maintenance.
The Results
| Before | After |
|---|---|
| PageSpeed: 49 | PageSpeed: 95 |
| 26 outdated plugins | 0 plugins |
| 5 critical security errors | 0 vulnerabilities |
| 503 errors "normal" | 100% uptime |
| Yearly maintenance | No maintenance |
| Copy-paste translations | Linked content |
| HTML editing | Plain text |
| $20/month | $1.03/month |
Her ads perform better. Rankings improved. She got time back.
No more coordinating contractors. No more wondering if the site is up.
The Lesson
If your website constantly needs fixing, maybe the website is the problem.
What Happened Next
Once the website stopped demanding attention, she started noticing patterns. The same questions coming in. The same answers going out. The same steps repeated.
She asked: "Can we automate ads?"