How Pooka Builds WordPress Websites That Last

15 December 2025

A Digital Dispatch by Sian Jamieson, Partnership Lead

Wordpress

And why charities and good causes benefit the most from a thoughtful build that’s designed for the long term.

If you spend enough time working with charity, public-sector, and third-sector teams, you start noticing a pattern. Most organisations don’t struggle because they chose the “wrong” website platform. They struggle because their site was never built with their future in mind.

At Pooka, we’ve rebuilt, rescued, refreshed and re-architected WordPress sites for more than a decade and every single project has reinforced one truth:

The difference between a website that lasts and a website that ages badly comes down to the foundations.

And those foundations are exactly where we begin.

WordPress Is More Than a CMS. For Us, It’s a Philosophy.

Back in August I spoke with Paul, Pooka’s Co-Director, why we chose to specialise in WordPress, he didn’t hesitate.

“WordPress powers about 43% of the internet… which is astonishing in itself.
It’s developed intentionally over many years, by a global network of paid developers and volunteers. If you’ve achieved 40-plus percent of the entire internet, you’ve done a pretty good job.”

For us, WordPress isn’t just dominant, it’s values-aligned.

Why?

It’s open source (no lock-ins, no licensing traps)
It keeps ownership in the hands of the organisation, not the vendor
It’s endlessly adaptable and doesn’t stand still
It’s developed by people who choose to work on it because they believe in it.

As Paul puts it:

“If you’re gifted enough to be paid to work on WordPress, you have the choice of where your skills go. Choosing to work on a vast open-source project speaks volumes about your values as a person.”

That matters deeply to us, a team built around ethics, transparency, and supporting organisations doing good in the world.

Our Approach: Build Small Now, Grow Big Later

Many agencies build WordPress websites by stacking themes, builders, addons and plugins until the whole thing looks impressive… but becomes fragile, slow and expensive to maintain. We go a different way.

Our principles:
1. A lean code base. Only what’s needed. No unnecessary plugins. No bloated theme frameworks. Just the essentials designed to be fast and long-lasting.

2. WordPress core first. We use as much of WordPress’ native capability as possible. Why? Because core WordPress is the most stable, future-proof part of the system.

3. Built for real teams, not theoretical ones. We design for the people who will actually be using the site. Often:

A comms coordinator juggling 10 things
A digital manager who inherited a system they don’t love
A charity lead who needs something reliable, accessible, and cost-effective

4. Tomorrow is part of the brief. When we build your website, we’re already thinking about next year. Will you need:

A shop?
A CRM?
A membership system?
A campaign hub?
Online resources or training?

Your foundations need to allow that without a rebuild.

Why This Approach Matters for Charities & Public Sector Teams

When your website is part of your day-to-day operations; fundraising, membership, public information, storytelling, it needs to be stable. Predictable. Expandable. Our build approach gives you:

✔ Long-term cost efficiency. No licenses. No renewals. No paywalls. Just open-source foundations you own.

✔ Lower maintenance demands. A small code base = fewer things to break.

✔ Better performance and SEO. Lean sites load faster and rank better.(Especially important with AI-powered search changing the landscape.)

✔ In-house confidence. Your team can update pages, add content, and create new sections without fear.

✔ Future-proof flexibility. We can add CiviCRM, WooCommerce, events, donations, memberships, WITHOUT rebuilding the entire structure.

When WordPress Shifts, It Doesn’t Break Your World

Another thing Paul said struck me:

“WordPress has moved forward over the years, but it hasn’t introduced many breaking changes. When updates cause issues, they tend to be small, visual things, not deep, damaging breakages.”

This is huge for overstretched teams.

You don’t want a CMS that flips itself inside-out every time it updates, especially if your content management is shared between volunteers, comms staff, and part-time digital leads.

WordPress evolves carefully because it has to: millions (probably billions) of websites rely on it. That kind of responsible stewardship is exactly what charities need.

Real Talk: Off-the-Shelf Builders Don’t Age Well

We rebuild a lot of sites built with:

Elementor
Divi
WPBakery
ThemeForest mega-themes.

They look great early on, but by the time we see them…

They’ve really slowed down
The licencing fees have become an annoyance
People are nervy about plugin updates breaking the site
Page updates have become almost impossible to understand.

Our builds are deliberately streamlined: We take the best of core-WordPress, align it with our client’s specific needs, and create websites that are as easy to manage five years down the road, as they were on day one.