How long does it take to build a React website?

Where do the weeks go in a React build?

Into five things a theme would otherwise have decided for you.

• The component system: design tokens, layouts, and the components every page is composed from. Built once, reused everywhere.
• The content source: a headless CMS wired in for a team that publishes, or a typed content registry for content that changes with the code.
• The rendering strategy: server-rendered by default, static where the content allows, so pages never wait on JavaScript to show text.
• Integrations: forms delivering to your inbox or CRM, first-party analytics, whatever the site has to talk to.
• The security headers and the performance budget, checked on every build.

This site is the reference build. It is server-rendered, makes zero third-party requests behind a content-security policy that blocks them, and its homepage ships under 115 kB of JavaScript on first load, with the budget enforced at build time. Keeping that policy strict is a week-one design decision, not a launch-week fix.

Week by week: an eight-to-twelve-week Next.js site

A site built as a product spends most of its calendar in the build phase, because there is more to build. The launch phase is the same length as any other site's.

Why is there no theme to install?

A theme is a set of decisions someone else made for a site they never saw: the grid, the type, the components, the JavaScript it loads whether you use it or not. A React site makes those decisions for this site, which is slower to start and faster at everything after. A new page type is a component, not a plugin; a design change is a token, not a hunt through overrides.

Do you still need a CMS?

Yes, if people who do not write code publish weekly. A headless CMS or headless WordPress wired into the build gives editors the interface they know while visitors get the React front end. No, if the content changes with the code: this site's knowledge base is a typed registry rather than a CMS, which costs a developer and a deploy per edit and saves running a second system. The choice is made in week one because it changes the build.

What makes a React build faster, and what stretches it?

Faster: an existing design system to build from, content that is ready, few integrations, and starting with the starter build before quoting features. Slower:

• Integrations with undocumented APIs, each one a small investigation before it is a small build.
• A design delivered as mockups without a system, so the tokens and components have to be inferred before they can be built.
• Third-party scripts that arrive late and want exceptions from a strict content-security policy.
• A content model that changes after the components that render it are built.

The way I scope a custom React build puts those on the milestone plan before the first component exists.

Questions