wordpress – Christian Peper

The Future of Websites: Is WordPress Still Relevant?

Posted on 3 February 20263 February 2026 by Christian

I’ve been working with WordPress for about 2 decades now. Back in 2006, I took a job as a sysadmin and consultant for a newly launched, small Open Source consultancy firm in Delft. We had a lousy website and I needed something to do, so I asked the boss. He was fine with it.

I tried Mambo, Joomla, then I tried Drupal and then WordPress. Things just clicked!

Nice separation of content and layout. Switch themes seamlessly. Useful plugins. Low hardware requirements. I was sold.

Since then, I have built many websites for small companies, shops, restaurants, service and health workers, alumni groups and more. It still works and changing themes is still very easy, with a little nursing here and there but otherwise smooth transitions.

But today, we also have WebFlow, SquareSpace, Wix, Framer and many more. With a little guidance, AI and MCP services can also generate a pretty impressive website for anyone in minutes. So do we still need WordPress or is it time to move on to greener pastures?

Well, exactly that question also dawned upon Jean Galea when their (7 year old) son asked how he could create a blog and website about his sports, travels, hobbies and interests. So Jean, a seasoned WordPress professional for over 15 years dove into the state of CMS at this time and investigated all the different options there are…

Jean looked at tens of CMSes, evaluated their usefulness and the pros and cons compared to what he knows intimately well: WordPress. I won’t go into the details, there is too much that he covered. But the TL;DR is:

If you’re a developer or agency wondering whether to jump ship, the honest answer is: there’s nowhere to jump to. Not yet.

If you’re nervous about WordPress governance — and I think that’s reasonable — the practical response is to keep your skills portable. Learn modern PHP and JavaScript. Understand the principles, not just the WordPress-specific implementations. If something does eventually emerge, you’ll be ready.

If you’re building a new site today and you need a CMS with an admin panel that non-technical people can use, WordPress is still the answer. I wish I had something more exciting to tell you.

The gap in the market is real. A modern, open-source CMS with WordPress-level usability and a growing ecosystem would be genuinely valuable. But nobody’s built it yet.
Jean Galea – https://jeangalea.com/wordpress-replacement/

Optimizing Data Collection: Use Google or Microsoft Forms

Posted on 17 June 20259 October 2025 by Christian

Don’t use WordPress for forms! Although it is easy to use and looks nice, leverage your existing Google Workspace (aka GSuite) or Office365 subscription!

Instead, build your forms in either Google or Microsoft Forms and embed the form in your website!

Why should you use cloud native forms?

This way, all the data collected about your visitors stays inside the platform you already have built and data is not shared between WordPress server from Automattic or whichever plugin you use from whatever country it originates. Data is collected in your form, which is hosted on your existing Google or Microsoft servers and subject to existing data protection and privacy regulations that you have already established.

Besides, using WordPress forms or plugins collects your data in a not so easy to share location. This usually requires you to log into WordPress find the data, export as a CSV, import somewhere else, process it and feed it into your CRM application/solution. By leveraging Google or Microsoft Forms, the data is collected in a spreadsheet in the cloud from where it is much more easily shared with other CRM applications.

How we search for take out food

Posted on 22 November 2020 by Christian

Hoe Nederland zoekt naar takeout food en afhaal maaltijden

Did a little digging in Google Trends for the Dutch habits when searching for takeout food.

Turns out “afhalen” is by far the most used. With takeout and takeaway coming behind. Funny thing was that to-go is more significant than togo. Guess we are grammatically correct rather than convenient.

Brand New Colorful Website for BY AMI

Posted on 10 January 2020 by Christian

Marking the first year in operation, BY AMI has certainly had a dream start by any standard! The restaurant was all over the media and Instagram is full of the colorful dishes and InstaWalls that his friend Jeroen van der Wier has made inside the restaurant. You really have to see these 4 meter high paintings yourself to fully appreciate them.

Needless to say Ahmed wanted his website to more closely reflect the image and style of the restaurant, his dishes, drinks and InstaGram account.

So I made him a new website by switching to a new theme that puts his (blog) posts front and center to shamelessly show of his colors at first glance. At the same time, the redesign puts more emphasis on mobile-first paradigm through Google AMP, a high-speed mobile experience that is natively supported in WordPress, because more than half of BY AMI’s visitors find the restaurant by discovery rather than by name. This way, everyone wins.

Finally, showcasing BY AMI’s dinner arrangements and services in a way that lets Google add semantics to the search results, I added Structured Data from schema.org to the site. Now, Google’s search algorithm can intelligently add various data about baby showers, theater arrangements or business offers to present a user with more targeted search results.

If you’re inspired by this project and would like to know how I can help your website, get in touch with me and create your site on WordPress.com. I can jump in later and help you continue it and will finish it in no time!

WordPress Implementation for Inspired Psychologists

Posted on 23 April 2019 by Christian

I’ve recently completed a WordPress implementation for two psychologists on Sint Maarten, who needed an experienced but fresh look to give advice on their proposed site map. While able to make the site themselves, there was already so much to do that they would be launching quicker with my help than they would be able to do by themselves.

My experience with creating websites and analytical skills also helped create their main menu and page content. This way, they just need to add content and be done with it.

The two friends and colleagues both share an “inspirational” love for their profession and I wanted to emphasise the no-nonsense approach of the two ladies. The language is very personal and direct and the site has ample opportunity to showcase their work with individuals as well as provide businesses with consultancy.

Kalliopie Designs

Posted on 22 March 201922 March 2019 by Christian

When a friend needs your help, you go and help. So when my friend told me about her passion and hobby to make high-end custom hand and clutch bags for friends, family and customers but didn’t know how to update her website, I jumped in.

Kalli studied Arts and Design in Philly and started making bags right away. First for herself, you know how that goes, but soon all her friends wanted one too. Her trademark – signature – is the “Evil Eye” which is a Greek symbol.

The evil eye is a curse or legend believed to be cast by a malevolent glare, usually given to a person when they are unaware. Many cultures believe that receiving the evil eye will cause misfortune or injury. Talismans created to protect against the evil eye are also frequently called “evil eyes”
Wikipedia

She also has a cool “skull” design, which reminded me a lot of the Mexican symbol used for “Dia de las Muertos“, the day of the dead. Both are really well done and the quality of her products is superb. Too bad you can only make so many bags by yourself, but she’s looking to increase production. When that happens, the site is easily expanded to include a little shop.

Best thing about this site is that Kalli already had professional photos done with her bags and dresses by St Maarten’s celebrity fashion and art photographer Yotam Sandak using her gorgeous friend Natascha as a model. It is easy to take pictures, harder to take good photos but it’s very hard to make beautiful great photos of models and products. I recognized the level of skills immediately and making the portfolio section for the sites was a joy!

https://kalliopiedesigns.com/

Redesigned BY AMI restaurant website

Posted on 7 January 201913 August 2024 by Christian

Over Christmas I recreated a website for my friend Ahmed. His popular restaurant needed a better style online to match the cool and colorful physical appearance of BY AMI in Rotterdam on the Kop van Zuid.

His designer had picked a couple of uncommon colors (mauve, ocean blue and gold) and finding a WordPress theme that allowed me to use those colors in a meaningful way was not as easy as that sounds.

But I found one and Ahmed is really happy with the new site. Customers are also giving him compliments over the new website, so I guess I did a good job!

The new site gave an opportunity to present and group all the different services BY AMI has in a clearer way. The menus are recreated from PDF as JPG to limit compatibility issues we’ve had with iOS :( and the many group arrangements are now also clearly presented in the main menu. I used the colors to highlight certain aspects of the pages to keep it a little less static and black&white. A splash of mauve or gold here and there breaks the monotony nicely.

Seaside Nature Park St Maarten has a new website

Posted on 12 September 201812 September 2018 by Christian

Complete overhaul of an outdated Drupal website. Tracked down the host (TCOhost in UK) through whois and contacted them. Hosting packaged was paid up for three years, so they assisted me promptly.

Created a new site online in WordPress.com and reorganized the site in accordance to the in-take discussion with the client. Main activities are horse riding tours for cruise ship day tourists, riding lessons for locals, inhabitants and expats and the pet farm for children of all ages.

seaside nature park activities — 3 main activities at Seaside Nature Park St Maarten

Main improvement is the streamlining of the order process. All pages are linked to a central booking for where the customer fills out the activity he or she is interested in and the request gets sent to booking office at Seaside Nature Park where it can be followed up.

Seaside Nature Park central booking form

Should a PayPal for Business be added, this setup can be easily extended to include payments and reservations.

Future improvements are daily or weekly blogging by the staff to showcase their passion for the park and their jobs and improved sales funnel to help guide potential visitors towards their purchase.

https://seasidenaturepark.com/

New St Maarten Nature Foundation site live

Posted on 20 August 2018 by Christian

I’m very proud to show you the new website for the Nature Foundation of St Maarten!

The old self-hosted WordPress.org site is still live and used but totally reworked. I made an export and imported it into a staging site on WordPress.com. Once satisfied, I exported that, cleaned up the self-hosted site by deleting all pages and importing the export file. Once the same theme was set, all that was left to do was customization.

Three focus areas are highlighted:

Preservation,
Research and
Education.

Pages were put into one of these areas and (blog) posts also categorized into the same. This way, their work is visibly contribution to at least one of their focus areas. By going in and manually tagging blog posts, search engines and AI can (in the future) gain a lot of semantic information from the posts and pages, hopefully resulting in more organic traffic.

Divi theme was removed in favor of a free lightweight theme. Plugins were optimized or removed to make the site load faster. Backups are scheduled weekly and security increased, for self hosted WordPress sites are a common target for automated scans and hijacking. Eventually, I recommend the Nature Foundation move to WordPress.com and avoid having to do maintenance on software at a slightly higher cost. But it saves them from having to find a webmaster and either pay him or ask to do it “pro bono”.

Planned Overhaul for ENIAC Alumni

Posted on 10 February 2018 by Christian

The alumni association ENIAC of my (Dutch) Alma Mater, University of Twente, wants to redesign its website and focus on its primary services. Many aspects have changed I first moved the website from flexible but labor-intensive WordPress.org over to a hosted (but somewhat restricted) WordPress.com platform. Facebook has become ubiquitous and mobile (smart)phones make it easier for alumni to stay in touch, check content and sign up for events, update their data in the alumni database and post pictures during events.

While the static content, such as official documents for annual member meetings, statutes and the monthly glossy, are still important to maintain, events, sign-up forms, social media and calendars will likely be the center focus of the new site.

Exact requirements and desires are still being discussed by the board, but here is heads-up. The main complication is how to cater to 3 vastly different groups of alumni: < 30, 30-50, > 50

If you are a member of ENIAC and are reading this, feel free to share your ideas for the new site and give your input to me or the board.