Hey, it is Leo. If you have visited LensClear recently, you might have noticed things feel a bit different. The pages load faster, the layout looks cleaner, and honestly, it just feels better to browse. That is because I have spent the last few weeks rebuilding the entire site from the ground up.
Why I Left WordPress
WordPress got the job done in the early days, but over time it became a chore. The admin dashboard slowed to a crawl. Every plugin update felt like a gamble — will it break the theme? Will it conflict with something else? And the site itself kept getting heavier. Articles with lots of photos took forever to load, especially on mobile. I was fighting the platform instead of focusing on content.
The New Stack: Astro + Sanity
The new site is built with Astro on the front end, Sanity as the CMS, and deployed on Cloudflare. Astro ships almost zero JavaScript by default — just clean HTML and CSS. That means when you open an article, your browser is not downloading bloated frameworks. It gets the content and renders it instantly. Sanity handles all the content management behind the scenes. Writing posts, organizing photos, managing categories — it is all faster and more flexible than WordPress ever was.
What Actually Changed
Besides the speed boost, I added a few things that were long overdue. There is now a Gallery section where I can share standalone photos with full EXIF data — camera body, lens, aperture, shutter speed, ISO, all of it. The contact page has a real working form again, powered by Sendflare. I also added Terms of Service and Cookie Policy pages, because running a proper site means handling the boring legal stuff too. And I unified the typography across the entire site to Geist, so reading feels consistent whether you are on a phone or a desktop.
What's Next
This rebuild is a foundation, not a finish line. I am planning to add a comment system, better photo archive browsing, and a newsletter signup in the coming months. But first, I want to make sure everything works smoothly.
If you run into any bugs or have suggestions, hit me up through the contact page. Thanks for sticking around — I hope the new site makes reading about photography a little more enjoyable.