ProgrammerHumor.io - Wordpress to Elixir (Phoenix Liveview)

#webdev #programming #ai #elixir

We Ditched WordPress for Elixir/Phoenix and OMG The Results!

Average Traffic

Alright fellow devs, I've been sitting on this for a week and I NEED to share because I'm still in shock.

We finally bit the bullet and migrated ProgrammerHumor.io from WordPress to Elixir/Phoenix LiveView. After months of "should we?", "is it worth it?", and "but WordPress is battle-tested..." we took the plunge.

And holy crap. I'm kicking myself for not doing this sooner.

The Results (aka Why I Can't Stop Smiling)

Speed: Our site is EMBARRASSINGLY faster. Like, I'm almost ashamed of what we were serving before. Pages that took 2-3 seconds to load are now responding in milliseconds.
Server Load: It's like our servers are on vacation. CPU usage dropped off a cliff. I checked our monitoring dashboard and thought it was broken at first.
Stability: Those fun random WordPress crashes that had me getting 3AM alerts? Gone. Completely gone. I've actually been sleeping through the night for the first time in months.
The UX: LiveView is a game-changer. The seamless interactions without full page reloads make the site feel like an actual modern web app instead of, well, WordPress.

The Migration (aka Not The Nightmare I Expected)

I was dreading the migration. We had years of content, custom plugins, and enough technical debt to make me break out in hives just thinking about it.

But Phoenix's conventions actually made restructuring everything WAY cleaner than I expected. That WordPress spaghetti code we'd been band-aiding for years? Gone. Replaced with something that actually makes sense when you look at it.

Don't get me wrong - it wasn't trivial. But it wasn't the soul-crushing ordeal I had built up in my head either.

For Anyone On The Fence

If you're sitting there thinking "but WordPress works fine..." - that's what I told myself too. For YEARS. "Fine" is the enemy of awesome.

We're only a week in, but I'm already seeing:

Faster development cycles (Using a simple CICD pipeline)
Cleaner code
Fewer bugs
NO WORDPRESS PLUGIN HELL
EASIER BACKUPS
A site that doesn't make me wince when I look at the backend

I honestly can't imagine going back.

Questions For Other Elixir Converts

We're still new to this (only been live for about 7 days) but I'm curious about the long-term experience. Anyone else make a similar migration? How has it held up over time? Any gotchas I should watch out for?

Drop your experiences in the comments - I'm all ears!