I never had a WordPress phase. While a lot of web professionals were building on WordPress, I was deep in Drupal — and for good reason. Drupal's modularity, lean code, and powerful content architecture made it the right tool for complex, custom sites. I co-founded Design 4 Drupal, Boston at MIT. I knew the platform inside and out.
But even with all of that, there was always a gap. Drupal is a developer's platform. As a designer, I was working in Sketch or Photoshop, handing off comps to a developer, and hoping the translation held. It usually didn't — not completely. The design intent would shift in the handoff, and fixing it meant another round of back-and-forth.
Then a developer friend showed me Webflow.
Design and development in the same tool
What Webflow solved wasn't a WordPress problem. It solved the handoff problem. For the first time, I could design and develop in the same environment — visually laying out a page while generating clean, semantic HTML and CSS behind it. No translation layer. No version drift between the design file and the live site. What I designed was what got built.
For someone who thinks simultaneously in design systems and CMS architecture — which is how my Drupal background trained me to think — Webflow was the missing piece. Webflow's Collections and Collection Lists map almost directly to Drupal's Content Types and Views. The mental model transferred. The frustration didn't.
What Webflow does well
Webflow is purpose-built for professional sites. SEO controls, forms, CMS, and hosting all come with the platform — no plugins, no themes to fight, no backend complexity. The code it produces is clean and fast. And the on-page Editor means clients can update their content directly on the live site, without navigating a backend dashboard.
We build in Webflow using Finsweet Client First methodology, which keeps projects organized and maintainable long after launch. For organizations with marketing teams, complex content needs, or enterprise-scale requirements, it's an exceptionally capable platform.
A note on platform fit
Webflow isn't the right tool for every project. For organizations that want a polished, professional site without custom CMS planning, Squarespace is a genuinely strong option — and one MacPhee Design supports as a professional Squarespace Partner. And for large-scale enterprise sites that require Drupal's advanced permissions, workflows, or integrations, we still know that world well.
The platform choice always follows the project requirements. But for the majority of what we build — custom, content-rich sites that organizations can own and manage confidently — Webflow is where we do our best work.
If you're thinking about a platform change, or just want to talk through what's right for your project, let's talk.
