My first website was plain HTML. Every tag written by hand, every layout built with tables. Full control, zero abstractions. Then came Joomla, which solved things but added layers I didn’t always want. When I migrated my own sites to WordPress, I did it because it made more sense for what I needed — not because it was the trend.
The sites I migrated were zao3d.com — back then a 3D services portfolio and tutorials, the seed of what is now the academy — and gpcstudio.es, which started as an excuse to teach a course on e-commerce portal management. The original domain was gestionportalescomercio.com, which says everything about how you named things in 2010. Over the years it became gpcstudio.es. Zao3D was available in Spanish, English and Polish. The reasons for the Polish are a story for another post.
That was around 2010. And as I tend to do when something convinces me, I taught it. I ran a WordPress course while I was still figuring it out myself. I’ve always learned better that way — explaining something forces you to actually understand it.
Fifteen years later I’m still using WordPress. Just not on the frontend anymore.
The decision to build javivega.com headless didn’t come from a specific frustration. It came from wanting to recover something: full control over the HTML that reaches the browser. With a classic stack — WordPress, theme, builder — the result can be good, but there’s always a layer between what I want and what comes out. The theme decides things. The builder decides others. With Next.js on the frontend and WordPress only as a CMS, the HTML is what I write.
There’s another reason. Three.js pushed me to take JavaScript seriously again. And when you start understanding JS properly, Next.js stops feeling complicated. The pieces fall into place.
The argument that carried the most weight was practical: if I ever want to go back to classic WordPress, there’s nothing to migrate. The content is already in WordPress. I just change the frontend. 95% of my clients use WordPress and that’s not going to change. I’m not interested in leaving the ecosystem — I’m interested in using it differently.
javivega.com is where I try that. No client waiting, no deadline. Just to see what comes out.