Removing Next.js Got My Blog to 100 on Every Lighthouse Category
A developer shares their journey of optimizing a personal blog to achieve a perfect Lighthouse performance score. The process involved moving away from the Next.js framework in favor of a more lightweight, custom-built solution.
Why it matters
It highlights the ongoing debate in web development regarding the trade-offs between feature-rich frameworks and raw performance optimization.
2026-10-26 8 min read English My blog just scored a perfect 100 on every Lighthouse category. I love blogging. I wanted to build a blog that’s light, fast, free of clutter, able to run multiple blogs, and fully accessible on top of that. And finally, at long last, I’ve more or less pulled it off. It was quite a tedious process. Ugh… and I even had to remove Next.js, the framework I’d been using most. It was far, far more painful than I expected. I’d like to share the journey of improving performance while building this blog.
When you think of blogs, a few names come to mind. Medium, Blogger, Ghost… But none of them satisfied me. Medium and Blogger are bloated with features, and their actual performance wasn’t satisfying either.
Get smarter about the news
Sign up free for a feed built around what you actually care about, Dive Deeper research on any story, and the full text of every article.
Create free accountAlready have an account? Sign in