{"id":15009,"date":"2026-08-24T11:10:32","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T08:10:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/creativethemes.com\/blocksy\/?p=15009"},"modified":"2026-08-24T13:54:55","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T10:54:55","slug":"bjarne-oldrup-case-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/creativethemes.com\/blocksy\/blog\/bjarne-oldrup-case-study\/","title":{"rendered":"How Bjarne Oldrup Accelerated Delivery While Reducing Web Development Costs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Project management at Drupal agencies is frustratingly slow<\/strong>. Making simple changes like adding a menu item takes 8 steps, a couple of weeks, and racks up a \u20ac1,000 bill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is what Astra<\/a> (Denmark\u2019s national center for science education) dealt with every day with the 3rd-party websites in their network. These sites collaborated with teachers, institutions, and policymakers to improve science education, offering resources and networking opportunities for science professionals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Astra hired Bjarne Oldrup<\/a> (web developer) to reduce turnaround time and web development costs<\/strong> for their 3rd-party websites. Bjarne worked out that switching to a WordPress<\/a> and Blocksy<\/a> Theme setup would shorten execution time (from weeks to 15 minutes) and eliminate the need for costly Drupal agencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Finding Alternatives to Slow & Costly Drupal Agencies<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A two-part alternative was found: swap Drupal for WordPress and bring development in-house.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like Drupal, WordPress was free and open source. But unlike Drupal, WordPress had a much larger pool of talented developers, which meant that Astra could hire cost-effectively. A multitude of add-ons (like themes and plugins) were available at affordable prices, keeping development within budget. Take, for instance, Blocksy \u2013 it\u2019s free and comes with an optional Companion plugin<\/a> at a sustainable price of $149 per annum or a $499 one-time fee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Along with reasonable price points, WordPress add-ons come feature-complete, so there\u2019s no need to build the website from scratch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cWith WordPress and a largely feature-complete theme like Blocksy, the in-house dev can implement, test, and deploy a new menu item before lunch,\u201d says Bjarne.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

That isn\u2019t to say WordPress add-ons are uncustomizable. There are plenty of non-proprietary WordPress add-ons that do not lock developers into the system, making it easy for in-house teams to create custom builds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Testing a WordPress Tech Stack<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The Gutenberg Editor and Blocksy Theme formed the best WordPress tech stack<\/strong> for ensuring Astra\u2019s 3rd-party websites were fast, secure, accessible<\/a>, and sustainable<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bjarne had used other page builders like Divi, but Gutenberg, being WordPress\u2019 native editor, was faster, integrated well with the core, and came equipped with powerful pre-built blocks and patterns that could be used to build entire websites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blocksy was deeply integrated with Gutenberg and had its own library of custom blocks and patterns to fill Gutenberg’s gaps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cBlocksy took care of all the stuff that Gutenberg sucked at in the beginning. Pretty UI; A functional customizer. Menus. Woo. With V2 of Blocksy, good support for theme.json; well-named custom properties; I’m almost dancing around integrating everything<\/strong> like WSForm and my own CSS. The DRY principle.\u201d \u2013 Bjarne Oldrup<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

To test the Gutenberg + Blocksy tech stack, Bjarne used tools like:<\/p>\n\n\n\n