Selecting 4 high-performance web technologies for my site was no easy task.
It involved inspecting radar sites, reading articles, & watching developer videos, combined with my experiences using websites to decide on 4 high-performance web technologies I call the “Fantastic Four” (WP, Bricks, ACSS & Frames) system.
For new entrepreneurs, choosing quality technology early is critical. It saves countless hours of trial & error, & prevents costly rebuilds down the road.
By choosing reliable & proven tech a stable business foundation is created, letting founders focus on growing business v’s fixing technical issues.
Below are the 4 web technologies I have happily used on SBMarketer.com for two years.
1. WordPress Base
I selected the trusted self-hosted WordPress for my business foundation.
This was the first of 4 high-performance web technologies I needed for SBMarketer.
My first experiences using WP were positive editing sites for a Business School & a Medical Training Institute, & the platform proved reliable & flexible.
WP is the “engine” for thousands of websites. It’s popular because it’s easy to learn, has hundreds of plugin features, & can grow with you—on a small blog.
There’s plenty of community support, & It’s built with search engines in mind. You can easily optimise a site for search with plugins, like Rank Math SEO.
It powers around 60% of all CMS sites worldwide, & its affordability comes from being an open-source platform (free) with many free themes & plugins.
“WordPress quality is guaranteed & many famous entrepreneurs trust it for their websites.”
Here are some examples:
- Matt Mullenweg: The co-founder of WordPress runs several of his businesses through WordPress, including his company Automattic;
- Kevin Geary: The founder of Digital Gravy Web Agency, & WP Plugins Automatic.css & Frames uses it for his business & personal sites;
- Tony Robbins: The renowned life coach & motivational speaker, runs his blog through WP;
- Richard Branson: The founder of the Virgin Group uses WP for his personal blog, where he shares his thoughts & adventures;
- Arianna Huffington: The co-founder of The Huffington Post uses WP for her new venture, Thrive Global, about behaviour change.
WP is well supported with security & technical updates (multiple per year), & it’s market share is growing. It will still be evolving in ten years from now.
“I find WP efficient for building sites, blogging, & adding custom features (via plugins). It was the tech I used for a Business School Research Blog.”
I use performance plugins like Rank Math SEO, Perfmatters, & WP Rocket to improve my page loading speed & search engine understanding.
It’s a smart decision to choose WP self-hosted, as you get a professional platform with maximum flexibility for customisations to suit individual needs & budgets.
2. Bricks Theme & Builder
Next I found three choices for my WP Theme & Builder—Bricks, Cwicly, & Oxygen.
They all provided pro features, output quality code, & enabled DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) development.
This was the 2nd of 4 high-performance web technologies I needed for SBMarketer.
It was important to find a theme & builder that was going to assist Semantic Standards, facilitate importing wireframes, & enable custom design.
I selected Bricks Theme & Builder as it was recommended by Kevin Geary, a developer who demonstrated the clean code advantages of using it.
“Bricks is your all-in-one tool kit for customising WP websites, it does the heavy lifting (HTML, PHP, & CSS) for you via intuitive dashboard controls.”
Its a powerful builder which facilitates creating websites using a visual tab (drag & drop) interface, & an options panel to add content, styling, & queries.
It has a parent & child theme, making customisations possible by activating the child theme, & it enables sections that enhance Semantic Standards.
Kevin’s tutorials inspired me to do his Website Building 101 Course—which uses Bricks & I can recommend it for learning about high-performance websites.
“By activating the child theme in WordPress, my website customisations are safely stored in the child theme which overrides the parent theme.”
Bricks smart dashboard enables importing wireframes, & manages PHP & CSS scripts while enhancing Semantic Standards via auto tagging.
After using Bricks for two years, I’m very happy with the builder & theme for doing the heavy lifting on my custom blueprints, wireframes, & websites.
3. Automatic.css Styling
Next I needed a system & framework for styling.
This was the third of 4 high-performance web technologies I needed for SBMarketer.
Automatic.css (ACSS) is a Utility-First Framework that speeds up website styling.
ACSS provides capability to globally style a site with utility classes built on tokens (design values), responsive grids (Flex-Grid), & right-click menus.
“ACSS is a Utility-First Framework that speeds-up styling a WP website.”
One reason why Bricks works, is its ability to integrate with third-party systems like Automatic.css & Frames that add styling & pre-built structure to web pages.
I like how ACSS gives you the ability to style multiple HTML elements from one utility class.
If you want to quickly change the colour of multiple HTML elements, just style & attach one utility class.
You get the benefit of an entire Styling Framework to use, which was a project undertaken by Kevin Geary to help his agency become more efficient.
With ACSS presets you can reference or adjust colors, shades, & transparencies, using the framework’s utility classes from the dashboard inside Bricks.
You can apply consistent spacing across a website via utility classes (with settings for padding, margin, column, rows) for visual rythm.
It offers consistency with global colors, shades, spacing, & typography across an entire website, which enhances your brand colours & identity.
4. Frames Structuring
Finally I needed a collection of pre-built wireframes (unstyled) for page structuring.
This was the last of 4 high-performance web technologies I needed for SBMarketer.
With a professional wireframe collection, you become empowered to customise web pages like a pro.
Frames integrates with Bricks & speeds up your wireframing workflow so you can build pages in less time without having to code structures.
“Frames is a system of pre-built wireframes that are unstyled for structuring pages & websites.”
Frames empowers custom design structures, provides technical superiority with efficient HTML, PHP & CSS, accessibility, & enables DRY development practice.
If you’re thinking why do I need unstyled wireframes, & isn’t it better to use a complete web page template—that’s already styled?
The answer is no. It’s more efficient to build with unstyled wireframes, so you’re not undoing existing page styling & then restyling for new brand colours.
Frames is powered by ACSS for perfect code consistency & ease of styling. It provides maximum efficiency for structuring pages with Semantic code.
Each element has a BEM-organised class for styling, allowing multi-element styling simultaneously.
Frames uses CSS Grid, over the less efficient Flexbox.
The DOM structure follows HTML5 & A11y (accessibility) best practices, & spacing is controlled with gap & utility classes for global adjustments.
4 High-Performance Web Technologies
The “Fantastic Four” (WP, Bricks, ACSS, & Frames) web system is reliable & user-friendly for both non-techies & professionals.
If you’re goal is to have an Internet business & coach or consult services, then you need the “Fantastic Four” system to build a quality foundation.
These 4 high-performance web technologies combined with my Website Launch Kits will help you achieve your Internet business faster.
Take note, not all builders are equal!
It’s important to ensure you’re using a pro builder like Bricks that outputs clean code & Semantic Markup, without producing excessive code.
It will save you wasting time & money on popular WP themes (sounds like mentor), that output messy code & are often slow on Google’s CWVs.
With my instructions on how to start & Website Launch Kits, you can build a site on your PC & choose where to start—from Base Camp One, Two, or Three.
- WP Blueprint Skeleton: Partially structured for customising (Base Camp One);
- WP Wireframe Skeleton: Fully structured start adding content (Base Camp Two);
- WP Starter Site: 1-3P DFY (Base Camp Three).
All 4 technologies are designed to build high-performance websites & they’re preferred by pros for their efficiency, scalability, & maintainability.
To start, get my High-Performance Website Checklist Quiz, download the checklist instantly or get a copy emailed—with my Website Launch Kit offers.
Do you want to learn more about the “Fantastic Four” web system?
Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.
