Matthew Brook's site, rebuilt for him to edit

A singer's WordPress site rebuilt so he edits it himself. Main content now appears in 1.1 seconds in a mobile test, not 4.8.

The Matthew Brook home page, a dark page with a photograph of the singer at left and his name set large at right, over the Observer's line "Matthew Brook, who turns anything he sings to gold" and two buttons. — Fig. 1 The Matthew Brook home page, as it runs now. Captured 11 November 2026 at 1280 px. Photograph: © Jess Shurte Photography & Dunedin Consort.

Client: Matthew Brook
Sector: Professional performer
Live since: October 2026
Scope: WordPress migration, Website, The editor
Client approval: The client has seen and approved this study
Built with: Astro, Netlify, Decap CMS
The live site: matthewbrook.com

The situation

Matthew Brook is a world-renowned bass-baritone. His WordPress site had become slow, with main content taking 4.8 seconds in a mobile test, and awkward to update, so maintaining the diary fell behind.

What we did

We rebuilt it as pages made in advance, at the same addresses, so every old link still works.

We built it with Astro and Decap CMS, and host it on Netlify.

Matthew edits the site himself. The code, the domain and the hosting are in accounts in his name, or transferable to him on request.

Headline changes

Main content on screen, mobileBefore4.8 sAfter1.1 s
Performance score, mobileBefore81After100
Homepage weightBefore706 KiBAfter278 KiB

A PageSpeed Insights report for matthewbrook.com on mobile, run on 2 November 2026 at 17:27. Performance, Accessibility, Best Practices and SEO each score 100, and Agentic Browsing scores 2 of 2. There is no real-visitor data yet. — PageSpeed Insights, mobile, matthewbrook.com, run on 2 November 2026 at 17:27. A single run of the new site. It is too new for real-visitor data, and the old site's 4.8 seconds cannot be run again.

How each figure was measured

Main content on screen, mobile. PageSpeed Insights lab test (Lighthouse 13.6.0), mobile profile, median of three runs, homepage. Old WordPress site measured at 10:55 UTC and the new site at 12:45 UTC on the day of launch. 28 October 2026.
Performance score, mobile. PageSpeed Insights lab test (Lighthouse 13.6.0), mobile profile, median of three runs, homepage. Old and new sites measured on the day of launch. 28 October 2026.
Homepage weight. PageSpeed Insights lab test (Lighthouse 13.6.0), mobile profile, median of three runs, homepage. Old and new sites measured on the day of launch. 28 October 2026.

In detail: every measure and its method

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Last reviewed 29 October 2026.

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