If you dread making updates to your website, you’re not alone.
It’s frustrating when your site’s page builder moves at a snail’s pace. Or when you’re limited to just a few customizable fields. Or when you have to go on a hunt for your brand colors each time you add a new page or section to the site.
At Webspec, we hear from clients every week who share these dilemmas. That’s why we’ve created a custom solution: an in-house WordPress theme and plugin called Moraw. (Short for “More Awe.”)
It’s now powering websites of all sizes, from small businesses to large school districts to major companies. It’s easy to use while providing a built-in foundation for best practices like accessibility, consistent branding, and SEO. Most importantly, you don’t need a degree in computer science or a full hour of your day to design a page or upload a photo.
We talked with two of the main architects of Moraw, Webspec Chief Operations Officer Aaron Brown and senior developer Ryan Oeltjenbruns, about what makes the framework faster, optimized for SEO, and easier for our clients to edit. Here’s a closer look.
“The guiding principle is: Let’s be fast, accessible, easy, and fun to use,”
Aaron Brown, Chief Operations Officer
Why Your WordPress Theme & Page Builder Are Important
Many web design agencies use in-house themes that rely on third-party page builder plugins. These page builders are great for people who don’t know how to code. They offer easy drag-and-drop editing with several predesigned elements, but that comes at a cost. They typically carry a significant amount of code, which over time can slow down loading and hurt site performance.
Site speed is important for websites because it’s a Google ranking factor, keeps users on your website, and encourages conversions. Rather than piling heavy third-party plugins on top of WordPress, Webspec built Moraw to work directly inside WordPress’s native Gutenberg editor. Gutenberg is the page-building engine that drives WordPress, allowing users to edit page elements on their site without needing to know code. Moraw takes the built-in drag-and-drop editing of Gutenberg and enhances it with Webspec’s custom-engineered blocks, brand guardrails, and default accessibility settings.
“Our sites can be significantly faster because we’re not loading extra code, extra JavaScript, extra CSS,” senior developer Ryan Oeltjenbruns says. “We only load the parts of the code that we need to render that page. And so by deciding to hook ourselves to what WordPress was trying to do natively for page building, it has allowed our sites to be significantly more performant.”
And, because Moraw is built on WordPress (not proprietary code), your website remains the same if your team ever moves hosting away from Webspec.
The Power of a Block Library
Working with the Moraw framework allows Webspec to leverage the power of a “block library.” This is a set of predesigned “blocks,” or building blocks, that are used to construct each webpage.
Every website uses similar components, such as a two-column layout with text on one side and a photo on another, or a banner image across the top of each page. Others are more complex, like mobile-friendly data tables or animated stat counters.
While these components are often reused on websites, that doesn’t mean every website looks alike. In fact, starting with these common elements allows Webspec to spend less time during each web design process developing basic components and more time designing unique ones and adapting them to the specific look and feel of the brand.
“It allows us to spend more time in the design process creating little ‘wow’ moments,” Aaron says. “Those can be animations or custom iconography or cool photo treatments – just ways to make the brand come to life online.”
Webspec’s designers and developers create this block library to build the website. Then, once the website launches, this library is available to clients to build future pages using the same building blocks. In the future, if they need to expand their design, Webspec can add additional blocks as needed.
Maintaining Web Accessibility & Brand Consistency
As a web design company, we often build websites for companies that will update and maintain the websites themselves. While this flexibility is important, it can also be difficult for a company to meet accessibility standards and keep brand continuity when they are adding new pages.
Webspec launches all of its sites with a large focus on web accessibility and consistent branding. The block library process then allows Webspec to provide clients with components that, by default, follow brand and accessibility guidelines. When a user needs to add a new page, this makes it easy to ensure new content will comply with those standards. For each block, the color options default to the ones in the brand’s style guide, which means users don’t have to hunt for the right shade.
“We give content managers a curated palette of their exact brand colors,” says Ryan. “You don’t have to guess or type in six-digit hex codes—and it stops someone from accidentally introducing an off-brand yellow or hot pink that ruins visual consistency or creates an accessibility issue.”
Do You Still Need a Custom WordPress Framework in an Age of AI?
Increasingly, clients come to Webspec asking for help with AI-generated websites and applications. That’s because it’s now possible to design a website fully in an AI program and publish it online, without the need for a page builder or a framework like Moraw.
However, there are significant downsides to this. While AI can quickly generate front-end code, that creates a new set of considerations for business owners. Ensuring that you’ve thought of everything your site needs and can verify that it was done correctly is a lot. Many don’t have the expertise to know what to do when things go wrong.
“If you want to build a basic site with AI on your own, you can get pretty close,” says Ryan. “But right now, people get 80% or 90% of the way there, spend hours fighting with prompts, and still can’t get it across the finish line. You still have to manage hosting, security, site speed, ADA accessibility, and SEO structure.”
Using a trusted CMS like WordPress with a vetted framework like Moraw makes designing new pages simple while ensuring security. AI functionality can then be integrated on top of these building blocks, if needed, to enhance it.
Comparison: Webspec Websites vs. Traditional Page Builders vs. AI-coded Websites
Third-party page builders remain a popular choice for many websites. Meanwhile, the continued advancement of AI has led some companies to consider AI-generated (or “vibe-coded”) websites independently from these page builders.
Here is how Webspec’s Moraw framework compares with these other popular choices.
| Feature | Webspec (Moraw Framework) | Traditional Page Builders | AI-Generated (“Vibe-Coded”) Sites |
| Site Speed | 90+ Google PageSpeed scores | Often slower due to large amounts of code (commonly in 30th-40th percentile range) | Unpredictable |
| Ease of Editing | Nearly pixel-for-pixel | Complex & clunky | Requires technical knowledge or constant re-prompting (which can quickly burn through tokens) |
| Brand Consistency | Built-in guardrails for styling, fonts, and colors | Easy for designers to break layouts | No guardrails |
| Accessibility | Built-in defaults that follow WCAG AA standards | Plugin dependent | Often not accounted for |
| Ease of Future Website Upgrades | Seamless (separate theme and plugin makes features easy to reuse) | Rebuild required | Requires re-prompting |
Ready to See It in Action? Let’s Build Something Together
Want to see how Webspec’s unique block library system can help your site? Contact our team today for a free consultation and walk-through.