We’re heading into the new year with something we didn’t expect to say out loud this soon: rebuilding our own agency site in Etch was worth the discomfort of being early.

We signed up for EtchWP before there was much to touch, test, or even judge. It started as a promise and a blank canvas, and it asked us to learn again, not just “install and go.” That learning curve ended up being the hidden benefit, because it gave us time to get up to speed before we needed to roll it into real client work.

Why we chose to be early adopters of EtchWP

We’ve been around WordPress for a long time. We reserved our WordPress name back in 2004, and we’ve operated as Manana No Mas (and before that, Vonahnen Designs and PR) since 2008.

Time in the space helps, but it doesn’t make anyone immune to blind spots. At 58, we still want the same thing we wanted at 28: learn, improve, and build better systems.

A quick snapshot of how we approach this as an agency:

• We can run projects, scope work, sell, and keep delivery moving.
• We have team members who know CSS, PHP, and design deeply.
• We don’t pretend we’re experts at everything just because we’ve been doing it a long time.

So when Kevin Geary began showing what EtchWP would become, what stood out wasn’t a fancy demo site. It was the structure and the intent, plus the idea that this wasn’t built to mimic the usual page-builder habits. If you want the official positioning straight from the source, Etch explains that clearly on their page about the product direction and “why” it exists: Etch’s stated purpose and product philosophy.

We’ll be blunt about the cost too. Early adoption wasn’t cheap. We’ve bought lifetime licenses for other builders before, and we could have repeated that route. We still chose EtchWP because the promise solved a real agency problem for us.

The agency problem we wanted to stop: clients breaking layouts

If you’ve built sites in tools like Elementor, you know this moment.

A client logs in, makes what they think is a small edit, saves it in the wrong editor, and suddenly formatting collapses. Then comes the Friday-afternoon panic message blaming hosting: “The site is broken.”

What makes this worse isn’t the fix. The fix is often five to ten minutes.

The real cost is emotional:

• They feel embarrassed.
• They wonder if they were trained poorly.
• They lose confidence in the site, and sometimes in the agency.

We don’t run our agency by punishing that mistake. We’ll usually treat it as a goodwill repair, fix it fast, and then send a quick screen-share video showing how to avoid it next time. That approach keeps trust intact, but it doesn’t remove the root issue.

What we wanted was a build process where a client could safely edit basics in the WordPress block editor without wrecking what we built in the builder.

That’s the promise that pushed us over the line with EtchWP: build in Etch, but still let normal WordPress editing happen in a safer way. Our understanding is that what we build in Etch is represented for clients as editable block-level content, so they can change a headline or swap an image without detonating the page structure.

Etch is different enough that it helps to start with their “need to know” framing so expectations are set correctly: Etch documentation, “Need to Know”.

Our own site had a different problem: it looked good, but didn’t sell

We’ve rebuilt the Manana No Mas site more than once. One version was a blog-forward, newspaper-style layout that we personally loved. It was engaging, content-rich, and easy to browse.

It also didn’t convert.

Friends in marketing groups told us a hard truth: the site was beautiful, but they couldn’t tell what we were selling or what they were supposed to do next. That’s a dealbreaker for an agency site.

After that, we experimented with a BuddyBoss-based approach, thinking a community-style experience could double as a portfolio. In practice, we didn’t need to grow a community for a hosting and digital marketing agency site, so the community layer became extra weight without a clear return.

Over time, the site turned into what many long-running agency sites become: lots of additions, removals, deactivations, and leftover data.

The performance issue that forced the rebuild

Our old site (built in Bricks) worked, but it wasn’t crisp. It had years of legacy decisions behind it, plus the “duct tape and cardboard” effect that hits busy agency owners. We spend our best hours on client work, not on ourselves.

The tipping point was performance.

The site was scoring around 64 on page speed, and that’s not where we want to be if we sell hosting and site builds. Most people won’t run tests, but the right prospects do, and we didn’t want that doubt planted before a conversation even starts.

At the same time, we refused to throw away what we’d built in content.

We have posts going back years, including consistent, quality blogging since 2014, plus older content that still supports authority and longevity. We didn’t want to lose that SEO value by starting from scratch.

How we rebuilt Manana No Mas in EtchWP (without a clean WordPress install)

We rebuilt using a staging copy of our existing site, not a fresh install. That matters, because it means the result includes real-world messiness.

Step 1: remove what we knew we were done with

In staging, we fully removed pieces we weren’t going to support going forward(plugin fatigue), including:

• BuddyBoss remnants
• Groundhogg (not because it’s bad, but because it isn’t the tool we’re using right now)

Our goal was to reduce plugin and database weight, not just “deactivate and forget.”

Step 2: keep what we needed for our business model

We kept core parts of our platform that reflect how we actually operate:

• LifterLMS, along with memberships, courses, and users
• Our existing content library (posts and pages)

This matters for agencies serving education or membership clients, because the site isn’t just marketing pages. It’s also user accounts, access control, and learning content.

LifterLMS is built to integrate with a wide set of WordPress tools (forums, page builders, forms, payments), and it’s helpful to remember that most issues in this category are solved by being systematic. That mindset lines up with LifterLMS’s own guidance around troubleshooting and integrations, where the advice is to isolate variables and test methodically rather than guessing.

Step 3: add the commerce stack we wanted

We also added tools we want to build around next:

• Fluent Cart, because we want subscription flexibility without paying for a separate subscriptions add-on
• Fluent Community, because it was available to add and we wanted it present (even if we don’t promote it yet)
• Fluent CRM and Fluent Forms, since those were already part of how we operate

Again, not clean, not minimal, but real.

Step 4: install Etch as the theme and the builder, then simplify everything else

We installed Etch as our theme and page builder, then stripped out other themes (keeping WordPress 2025 as a fallback).

From there, we set a hard constraint: one month to rebuild and publish before the new year.

What we built: a simpler site with clearer offers

The new site is intentionally simple. We removed confusing “verticals” from the agency homepage and began moving those to the Kurt von Ahnen site, using redirects so older URLs don’t just vanish.

The navigation and structure focus on what the agency does right now:

• Home
• What we do
• Easy Button (our straightforward startup offer)
• Website subscription
• Enterprise development
• Social proof
• Posts
• Contact

We also kept supporting items like our support portal, discussion area (community), and recommended resources.

We’ll say it plainly: it’s not the prettiest version of our site yet. This phase was about structure, function, and shipping. Design polish comes after the foundation holds.

Fluent Cart checkout examples (what we wanted working fast)

A big win was getting purchasing paths working without a pile of extra complexity.

We set up:

1. Startup path: a $1,500 setup plus $99 per month.
2. Subscription path: plans like $200 per month for 12 months, then dropping to $99 per month after the term (with terms and conditions spelled out in the flow).

The checkouts are simple, which is the point. If someone is ready to buy, we don’t want them battling a maze.

Using EtchWP with LifterLMS templates (and why that matters)

We also proved something we cared about for enterprise work: our LifterLMS content could still look right.

Our approach was practical:

• We edited the templates for courses and lessons.
• We used rows and a three-column layout.
• We placed the dynamic content in the center column.

We’re sure there are cleaner ways to do parts of this (including custom CSS approaches), but the key takeaway is that the learning content displayed well, and the site stayed fast.

If you’re evaluating Etch from a “what even is it” perspective, this article helps frame the category question directly: Etch’s explanation of whether it’s a page builder.

The result that surprised us: Page speed jumped from 64 to 87

Here’s the headline result.

Our old Bricks-based site scored around 64 on page speed. After the rebuild in EtchWP, we hit 87, and that’s on a site that still carries more than a decade of content and a non-trivial plugin stack.

We didn’t buy more server resources to get that number. We didn’t “upgrade hosting” to cover for bloat. We rebuilt the site and got immediate gains.

For agencies, this part matters because performance conversations often go like this:

• “Your course site is growing.”
• “You have more students now.”
• “Let’s increase hosting resources.”

That conversation isn’t wrong, but we’re now questioning how often it’s a design and build-efficiency problem first. If we can ship better-performing builds from day one, we may be able to delay (or reduce) those hosting upgrade talks, especially for clients who are price-sensitive but still need solid performance.

A simple before-and-after view:

Area	Before (Bricks)	After (EtchWP)
Page speed score (our test)	64	87
Site history	Decade-plus, lots of changes	Same history kept
Feel when logging in/admin	Slower, heavier	Noticeably faster

Kevin Geary has discussed performance and architecture tradeoffs in multiple places, and hearing him talk through the broader WordPress stakes was part of why we paid attention early. This conversation is a useful listen if you want that wider context: Podcast episode featuring Kevin Geary on Etch and WordPress.

What early adoption gave us that waiting wouldn’t

We’re still in beta territory with EtchWP. That’s real. But we reached the point where we felt comfortable running it on our own production site, and that matters because we won’t ask clients to trust tools we won’t use ourselves.

Early adoption gave us three concrete benefits:

Time to learn without pressure
We weren’t forced to “figure it out in a weekend” on a client deadline. We had runway.

Proof on a real, messy site
This wasn’t a clean demo install. It was a living business site with LifterLMS, content history, and commerce moving parts.

A path to safer client edits
If clients can edit basics in the block editor without breaking layouts, we reduce emergency fixes and reduce client anxiety.

Where we go next (and what we still want to improve)

We’re not done. Websites never are.

Our next cleanup and improvement list is practical:

• Deactivate and remove what we don’t use yet (Fluent Community is a candidate).
• Tighten SEO details we’ve ignored, like titles and featured images.
• Keep improving layout consistency (headings, spacing, alignment).

We’d love to push the score into the 90s, but we’re also staying realistic. An 87 on a decade-old site rebuild is a strong baseline.

We’re open for projects in 2026, and we’re keeping it local too

As we roll into 2026, our calendar is open. We’re especially open to helping local startups get online fast, even when their budgets are modest.

We also host a WordPress meetup in Hutchinson, Kansas at Sand Hills Brewery on the second Tuesday of every month at 7 p.m. If you’re nearby, we’d love to see you there.

And for people who want to build their own agency, we’re continuing to grow WP Agency Academy as our way of paying it forward, sharing what we’ve learned about running a profitable, sustainable digital agency.

Conclusion

Early adoption worked for us because it gave us time to learn, test, and ship without waiting for a perfect moment that never comes. We rebuilt Manana No Mas in EtchWP, kept our long-term content, kept LifterLMS running, added new commerce options, and still raised our page speed from 64 to 87. That combination is hard to ignore. If we can keep building this way, Etch may change how we balance performance, client access, and long-term maintainability across the projects we take on next.