Happy New Year everyone! I can’t believe it’s 2026 already. I’m ready to go and see what this year will bring.
I think the best place to start is with a new website. I’ve been working hard and fully embracing core WordPress, and I’ve built an FSE-based theme to replace my headless Next.js setup. While I did have fun and saw great results with Next.js, I found that most users don’t understand (or need) the added complexity it brings. Unless you’re a high-traffic, enterprise-level business, headless simply doesn’t make a lot of sense.
In fact, with the latest WordPress Full Site Editing block themes using Gutenberg, I can achieve very similar results without the added complexity. It’s quite refreshing to have my hosting back in a single stack instead of managing multiple dependencies.
What about the performance gains?
I’ll be the first to say it. I was wrong.
You can get outstanding performance from Gutenberg and core WordPress. You don’t need a fancy JavaScript framework sitting on top of your hosting to make your site blazing fast. I found that we can easily create custom blocks for Gutenberg that can be registered just like components, and then output their JavaScript and CSS dependencies only when they’re actually used on the page. The result is a very lean, light, and fast website.
On top of that, when your website backend is fully built in Gutenberg, you get an excellent editing experience, one that we, as developers, can shape and mould however we like. We have the choice of using ACF Blocks or core WordPress block scripts utilising React to create our own blocks. Both offer great flexibility: ACF Blocks lean more towards a PHP-first workflow, while core WordPress scripts provide a React + PHP approach.
Hosting performance?
Previously, I was using a combination of DreamHost for affordable WordPress hosting and Vercel for free Next.js hosting. You can see the results of my old site below:
As you can see, certainly not slow. Next JS was doing a great job. Although, I did notice a little delay the first time I clicked on either my blog or projects. But I think this was because I was using the free tier of Vercel hosting.
I made the switch to xCloud WordPress hosting, with my newly built custom WordPress FSE theme. You can see the results below:
The final results:
| Platform | Next JS (headless) | Gutenberg (full site editing) |
| Performance Score | 95 | 99 |
| Actual load time (Sydney) | 425ms | 279ms |
And the winner is Gutenberg with my newly created Full Site Editing theme. It scored four extra points (99/100) and loads 146ms faster. There you have it, ladies and gentlemen, in the hands of a frontend expert, core WordPress is alive, well, and truly a competitive choice.
