Best Before Date: The Website Shelf Life
When I look back at the codebases and architecture we shipped in our first year of business, one undeniable truth stands out: software ages, whether you want it to or not.
Eamon McKiernan
From Hardcoded Templates to Headless Engines: How My Web Architecture Evolved (2019 vs. Today)
Over the years - through my time at an award-winning creative agency and the founding of Mintyy - my approach to building for the web has undergone a complete shift.
Eamon McKiernan
When I graduated back in 2019 and launched into the freelancing world, I thought I had web development completely figured out. I could take a custom design, turn it into a working WordPress website, and hand it off to a client.
Looking back from 2026, those early websites were functional, but they lacked the architectural discipline, performance standards, and deployment rigour required to build true, scalable digital assets.
Over the years - through my time at an award-winning creative agency and the founding of Mintyy - my approach to building for the web has undergone a complete shift. Here is an honest breakdown of how I designed and engineered websites when I first started in 2019 versus how we build high-performance digital engines at Mintyy today.
2019: The Hardcoded ACF & Template Era
Fresh out of study in 2019, my stack of choice was classic, monolithic WordPress paired with Advanced Custom Fields (ACF).
The Workflow:
- Static Page Templates: I would map out specific page layouts by creating hardcoded PHP template files in the WordPress theme directory (e.g.,
template-about.phportemplate-services.php). - Hardcoded ACF Inputs: Inside the CMS, I would set up ACF field groups tied directly to those specific page templates. A field like
about_hero_headingwould sit in the CMS, and the PHP template file would query it usingget_field().
// The 2019 Approach: Hardcoded PHP Template Query
<h1><?php the_field('hero_title'); ?></h1>
<p><?php the_field('hero_subtitle'); ?></p>
The Flaws:
While this worked well enough for small brochure sites, it was inherently rigid. If a client wanted to move a testimonial block above a hero section on a specific page, I had to rewrite the underlying PHP code. The site structure lacked modularity, content was locked into strict layout buckets, and version control/deployment was usually a manual, risky process.
The Bridge: Agency Experience, Roots Bedrock & CI/CD
Joining an award-winning creative agency changed everything. I realized that writing code was only 50% of the job—the other 50% was DevOps, deployment discipline, and code architecture.
When I launched Mintyy, I immediately brought these agency-level standards to my client builds. I stopped using standard WordPress installs and shifted to the Roots Stack:
- Roots Bedrock: Re-engineered WordPress into a modern 12-factor application. It allowed us to manage dependencies cleanly via Composer, store environment variables securely in
.envfiles, and move folder structures out of the public web root for enhanced security. - Roots Sage: Replaced messy PHP template files with a clean Blade templating engine and modern build tools (Sage/Vite), giving us modular component structures inside WordPress.
- Automated Deployment Pipelines: I killed off manual FTP uploads entirely. We built CI/CD pipelines that ran automated builds and deployed updates seamlessly via
rsyncacross three isolated environments: Local → Staging → UAT → Production.
This step bridged the gap between amateur freelancing and professional studio engineering.
Today: Modern Headless Architecture (Next.js + Sanity)
While we still occasionally maintain or build Roots Bedrock environments (and leverage WooCommerce when an e-commerce build calls for it), the core engine powering Mintyy today is Headless Architecture.
Our default stack for modern, high-growth brands is Next.js paired with Sanity Studio.
Why We Shifted:
- Dynamic Block Editors (No More Hardcoded Pages): Instead of locking clients into rigid page templates, we build modular visual block engines inside Sanity. Clients can stack, reorder, and customize hero blocks, case studies, interactive widgets, and CTA sections across any page without breaking the site's layout or design system.
- Sub-Second Page Speeds: By running Next.js at the edge, our front-end assets are pre-rendered, lightweight, and static-generated. There are no heavy server queries or bloated database calls blocking the render thread.
- AI-Search Readiness (AEO/GEO): Modern sites aren't just built for human eyes; they are built for AI crawlers. Our current builds enforce strict Semantic HTML, automatic JSON-LD Schema markup, and instant indexability for engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity.
- Non-Negotiable Accessibility (WCAG): Today, accessibility isn't an afterthought. Every build comes out of the box with keyboard navigation hierarchy, screen-reader aria labels, skip-to-content links, and layout shift (CLS) prevention.
The Lessons Learned from the Trenches
The biggest takeaway from my evolution over the last seven years is that a website is an operational asset, not a graphic design project.
Back in 2019, success meant making a page match a mockup, even if the code behind it was rigid and fragile. Today at Mintyy, success means building a fast, scalable, and secure engine—one that empowers clients to manage their content effortlessly while dominating modern search environments.
If your business is still running on a website built with 2019-era monolithic architecture, you are fighting a uphill battle against slower speeds, higher maintenance costs, and lower conversion rates.
