A New Digital Era for Active Away

If you’ve been on our website recently, you’ve probably noticed it feels a bit different. Faster. Cleaner. Sharper. That’s not just a fresh coat of paint - it’s the result of a complete rebuild that’s been going on quietly in the background over the last few weeks.

We’ve moved away from our old WordPress setup and launched a new, custom-built experience using Astro, Strapi and Cloudflare Pages. It’s been a big project, and for anyone who’s into the tech (or just curious how we work behind the scenes), here’s why we changed things and what’s actually different.

When WordPress Started To Creak

For years, WordPress did a solid job for us. It helped thousands of people find their perfect tennis holiday and it allowed us to grow quickly.

But as Active Away grew, so did the site.

• We had a long list of plugins.
• We had old content and layouts that were no longer fit for purpose.
• We had “quick fixes” layered on top of each other over time.

The result?

• The site started to feel heavy.
• Simple changes often needed a developer.
• Page load times crept up to a point that just didn’t feel right.

When you’re offering premium tennis experiences, the online experience has to match. Nobody wants to wait around for a page to load or fight clunky navigation on their phone. At that point it was obvious: we didn’t need another round of tweaks – we needed a new foundation.

Going Headless: Brains And Body

The answer was to move to a headless setup.

In plain English, this means we’ve separated:

• the “brains” of the site (where all the content and data live)
• from the “body” (what you actually see on screen)

Strapi is the brains. It’s where we store everything in a structured way:

• hotels
• tennis programmes
• coach bios
• testimonials
• page content

Instead of content being buried inside old page builders, it’s now neat, organised and easy to reuse.

Astro is the body. It’s the framework that builds the pages you browse. The useful thing with Astro is that it ships very little JavaScript to your device. Less code means:

• less to download
• less to process
• much faster pages

On top of that, we’re hosting the site on Cloudflare Pages, which means:

• the site is served from Cloudflare’s global edge network
• pages load from a location close to where you are
• we get fast, reliable deploys when we push updates
• security is handled at the infrastructure level

In short: the stack is lighter, faster and much easier for us to work with.

Building Pages Like Lego

One of the biggest upgrades for us internally is how we build pages.

Previously, if we wanted a new landing page for somewhere like Liberty Lykia, we’d be wrestling with templates, shortcodes and plugins. It worked, but it wasn’t exactly enjoyable.

Now we’ve built a library of reusable components – basically digital Lego bricks:

• hero sections (image or video)
• image galleries
• schedule tables
• coach profiles
• review carousels
• FAQs
• maps
• calls-to-action

Our team logs into Strapi and builds pages by stacking these blocks in the order that makes sense. For example:

• hero → key details → coaches → reviews → FAQs
• or something much lighter if the page only needs a few sections

This means:

• new holidays and campaigns can go live much faster
• the design stays consistent across the site
• we can experiment with layouts without needing a developer every time

The Smart Routing Engine Under The Bonnet

Behind all of this is a routing system we’ve built that we internally call the [slug] engine.

When you visit a page, the site effectively checks:

• is this a flagship holiday page?
• is this a simple content page (like “About Us”)?
• is this a legal page (like Terms & Conditions)?
• is this a special landing page for a campaign?

Based on that, it knows:

• which layout to use
• which content to fetch from Strapi
• how to put it all together

This lets us power very different types of pages from the same engine, without turning the code into a mess. Rich, content-heavy holiday pages and simple text pages are all driven by the same system – they’re just told to behave differently.

What Actually Changes For You

All of this is great for us behind the scenes, but the important bit is what it means for you when you land on the site.

1. Speed

We’re using Static Site Generation (SSG), which basically means pages are pre-built ahead of time.

When you click a link:

• you’re not waiting for the server to build the page on the fly
• you’re served a ready-made page almost instantly

That means fast, consistent performance – even when lots of people are browsing at the same time.

Here's the speed before (2.5s):

Here's the speed after (785ms):

This represents a 68% faster experience for users!

2. Mobile-First Experience

Well over half of our visitors browse on their phone. Often:

• on the sofa
• on the train
• in between matches

So the new design is built with mobile as the starting point:

• larger tap targets and clear buttons
• swipeable galleries
• simpler navigation
• typography that’s actually readable on a small screen

3. Visual Clarity

We’ve stripped back anything that doesn’t help you make a decision.

The focus is now on:

• strong resort photography
• clear explanations of what’s included
• simple breakdowns of tennis programmes, travel and accommodation

The front end is built using Tailwind CSS, which helps us keep things consistent and makes it easier to iterate on design without losing control.

What’s Coming Next

We are building a new booking system! To make your journey as painless as possible. This will integrate perfectly with our existing setup and mean that the booking process is a whole different level to our current one.

We are hard at work on this and are looking to unveil this in Q1 2026.

Thanks for being part of the journey - and we’ll see you on court soon. 🎾