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Your company website should not need a web team. Wire builds static HTML from markdown files. No plugins, no security patches, no database, no hosting complexity. Your content lives in git. Your site deploys on push. The bot keeps it fresh.
The Real Cost of WordPress
HTTP Archive data shows the median WordPress page loads in 3.5 seconds. A static site loads in under 1 second. That gap compounds: sitepins.com benchmarks measured WordPress at 43% passing Core Web Vitals versus 95+ Lighthouse scores for static sites, with 50 to 100 database queries per page load on WordPress versus under 50ms time-to-first-byte on static.
The performance cost is measurable. The maintenance cost is what kills most company sites. Someone has to update WordPress core, update plugins, fix whatever broke after the update, and then update the content. Most small companies give up on the content part. The site becomes a digital brochure from 2022.
The security picture has deteriorated sharply. Patchstack's 2026 State of WordPress Security whitepaper documented 11,334 new vulnerabilities in 2025, a 42% year-over-year increase, with high-severity flaws exceeding the previous two years combined. The weighted median time to mass exploitation is 5 hours. Hosting company defenses blocked only 26% of WordPress-specific attacks in pentesting, dropping to 12% for known exploited vulnerabilities. Patchstack's report states: "In 2026, everybody needs deep visibility into what their websites are made of and put automated security measures in place to mitigate new security vulnerabilities in less than five hours." A static site has no plugin surface, no database, and no PHP execution layer. There is nothing to exploit.
The financial gap is equally stark. Leavewp.com's 2026 benchmarks put WordPress total cost of ownership at $2,000 to $6,000 per year versus $15 to $855 per year for static sites. The difference is not hosting. It is the compounding cost of plugins, security monitoring, developer time for updates, and the occasional emergency fix after a plugin conflict breaks the layout.
There is now a third cost that WordPress sites are starting to pay. In February 2026, Cloudflare launched Markdown for Agents, a network-edge service that auto-converts HTML to markdown when AI crawlers request it. AI agents like Claude Code and OAI-SearchBot now send Accept: text/markdown headers when fetching web content. Cloudflare's own testing found that a simple ## About Us heading costs approximately 3 tokens in markdown versus 12 to 15 tokens in its HTML equivalent. Full-page conversions cut token consumption from 16,180 to 3,150, an 80% reduction. WordPress sites need Cloudflare's conversion layer to fix this retroactively. Wire sites never have the problem. Wire builds markdown natively.
The community fracture adds a fourth dimension. The feud between Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg and WP Engine triggered lawsuits and hundreds of Automattic employee departures, as reported by The Verge, and has stalled core development as contributor counts drop. The EU Cyber Resilience Act now requires every commercial WordPress plugin to have a Vulnerability Disclosure Program by 2026 to remain available to European users. With 46% of vulnerabilities receiving no patch before public disclosure, compliance will strain the plugin ecosystem further.
The question for company homepage builders is not whether WordPress is dead. At 43% market share it remains massive. The question is whether you would start a new homepage on it today.
How Wire Fits
Wire replaces the entire stack. Write markdown. Wire builds HTML. Deploy to GitHub Pages (free), Cloudflare Pages (300+ edge locations, built-in DDoS protection), Netlify ($19/user), or Vercel ($20/user). No PHP. No database. No plugins. No attack surface.
The AI content pipeline means your "About" page, your service descriptions, and your blog posts get refreshed when the industry moves. The news command monitors your space. The refine command integrates developments. The reword command optimizes for search. The bot runs this weekly.
Wire's 91 build checks catch problems before deploy: missing meta descriptions, broken links, thin content, duplicate headings, missing alt text. WordPress lets you publish anything. Wire refuses to build pages that fail its quality gates.
For the emerging AI discovery channel, Wire's built-in llms.txt generation, structured YAML frontmatter, and explicit heading hierarchy position Wire-built homepages to be cited by AI systems without requiring a conversion layer or third-party service. Gartner predicts a 25% drop in traditional search volume in 2026. The sites that get cited by Perplexity, ChatGPT, and Bing Copilot will be the ones that serve clean, structured content natively.
What to Customize
wire.yml
A company homepage needs three layouts: landing for the homepage, article for blog posts, and page for service descriptions. Configure header.cta with your primary call-to-action. Set header.offerings to your service categories.
nav:
- index.md
- Services:
- Overview: services/index.md
- Consulting: services/consulting/index.md
- Development: services/development/index.md
- Blog:
- Overview: blog/index.md
Landing Pages
Use layout: landing on your homepage. Wire's landing template gives you full control: hero sections, alternating content bands at <hr> breaks, and shortcodes for social proof.
:::testimonial
Working with this team cut our delivery time in half.
— Jane Doe, Head of Operations, Acme Corp
:::
:::stats
12 | Years in business
340 | Projects delivered
98% | Client retention
4.9 | Average rating
:::
Components
Wire ships shortcodes that cover the standard homepage conversion pattern without touching a template.
:::pricing handles service tiers. :::faq generates FAQ schema for rich snippets automatically. :::cta places conversion points throughout the page. :::logos builds a client logo cloud from image references.
:::cta
[Book a Call](https://cal.com/yourname){primary}
See Our Work
:::
What Wire Gives You for Free
Wire generates sitemap, robots.txt, RSS feed, JSON-LD schema (Organization and Article types), a search index for on-site search, llms.txt for AI discoverability, reading progress bar, table of contents, responsive layout, code copy buttons, and back-to-top navigation. None of this requires touching a template.
The llms.txt file matters more than it did a year ago. Cloudflare's Content Signals framework, launched alongside Markdown for Agents, introduced a header-based mechanism (ai-train=yes, search=yes, ai-input=yes) that lets publishers express how their content can be used by AI systems. Wire's structured frontmatter and llms.txt output align with this direction without requiring additional configuration.
Limitations
Wire does not handle forms, e-commerce, or user authentication. For contact forms, use a service like Tally, Typeform, or Formspree. Wire's form_id config connects to external form providers. For e-commerce, Wire is the content layer. Pair it with Stripe, Gumroad, or Shopify's buy buttons.
Quick Start
pip install wire && python -m wire.init
Scaffold your site
Run `pip install wire && python -m wire.init` to create the folder structure and default config.
Configure wire.yml
Edit `wire.yml` with your company name, URL, and nav structure. Set `header.cta` to your primary call-to-action.
Write your homepage
Create `docs/index.md` with `layout: landing` in the frontmatter. Add your hero copy, service descriptions, and a `:::cta` block.
Preview and deploy
Run `python -m wire.build --serve` to preview locally. Push to GitHub and enable GitHub Pages for free hosting.
The getting started guide covers the full setup in under 30 minutes. For sites migrating from WordPress, the WordPress migration guide documents how to move without losing rankings. Average migration recovery without a structured approach takes 523 days. 17% of sites never recover traffic.