Burned out on WordPress: Is transitioning to AstroJS + ApostropheCMS a smart move for a solo dev?
**Hi everyone,**
I’ve been programming as a hobby since I was about 15, and I currently work as a developer at our family’s digital marketing agency. I truly appreciate my workplace, but I’ve been facing some significant challenges lately that I’m hoping to get some advice on.
On a personal level, I struggle with ADHD and anxiety, which has sometimes made it difficult to keep up with my personal software goals. Right now, the only language I know deeply is Rust, and I spend my free time exploring the field of compilers as a hobby.
At work, our primary stack is WordPress. To be completely honest, this has become quite exhausting for me. The heavy content entry, constant technical troubleshooting, and overall poor Developer Experience (DX) and User Experience (UX) for our internal team have been draining. I am currently the only developer (we've tried hiring, but most couldn't adapt to our WP workflow). Because of the frequent and frustrating issues that come with WordPress, my hard work often goes unnoticed, and it occasionally leads to misunderstandings and stressful criticism at work.
I really want to change this system and build a healthier environment. My roadmap is to deeply learn JS and the DOM, then move on to React, and ultimately transition our projects to **AstroJS + ApostropheCMS**. My goal is to create a more developer-friendly environment that also delivers highly SEO-optimized, marketing-friendly sites for our clients. For our e-commerce projects, I’m planning to migrate entirely to **Shopify**.
**Here is where I would really value your insights:**
1. As a solo developer moving away from WordPress, is ApostropheCMS a solid and reliable choice for this kind of transition? 2. I also struggle with communicating my technical process to my bosses. Sometimes I spend 8 hours fixing complex underlying issues, but to non-technical management, it looks like a task that should have taken minutes. They’ve asked me to explain my workflow better so they can understand the "invisible" work I do. (To help bridge this gap, I’m even planning to build a DOM Diff Engine in Rust to better demonstrate behind-the-scenes changes!) How do you all handle communicating technical roadblocks and time estimates to non-technical management without getting overwhelmed?