The Forge and Smith team is incredibly excited to announce that our game-changing website builder, Refoundry, is available to the public. 

We’ve cut our build hours by 80% since we started creating all of our custom sites on Refoundry. We’ve also made clients a lot happier. 

Here’s everything you need to know about what Refoundry is, how it works, and how to get it. 

What is Refoundry? 

Refoundry is a low-code, themeless website builder plugin that works with WordPress. 

Everything WordPress can do, it can do, plus a whole lot more. It makes building websites faster, easier, and way more customizable for agencies like ours – or anyone who builds websites for a living. 

Refoundry can be used to build websites that exactly match any UI designs you create, rendering launch-ready code as you go. Developers can further customize it with additional CSS, JavaScript, React, and JSON API integrations. It’s compatible with any plugin that’s compatible with the Gutenberg editor, and integrates with any tool that integrates with WordPress. 

Our agency has officially been building all of our custom sites on Refoundry since late 2022. As of today there are nearly 100 Refoundry websites in the wild, with outstanding performance results!

Here’s a small sample of metrics they’ve achieved:

• +347% organic search traffic
• +173% conversion rate
• +168% donations 
• +86% faster page speeds 

Why did we create Refoundry?

Our clients wanted more control over their sites, and of course everyone wants faster page loads (especially Google). A solution that could deliver on both of those demands within the WordPress ecosystem, without compromising quality and accessibility, didn’t exist. So we built our own. 

“Custom websites don’t need to be dependent on development skills,” said Shawn Johnston, owner and founder of Forge and Smith and Refoundry. “And clients demand that we move faster. We needed a solution that could deliver the high-performance quality of custom, but be usable by everyone on the agency team.” 

In 2021 Johnston recruited three experienced engineers to join our agency’s existing team of strategists, developers, and creatives. Together we built, tested, and iterated Refoundry.

The feedback from our clients has been outstanding, with some agency clients so thrilled that they immediately hired us for another project.

End users love that it gives them more control in a straightforward visual editor, and they don’t have to hire a developer to make layout, navigation, and style changes. They especially appreciate the responsive component templates, which make it quick and easy to add new sections or whole pages. And their sites pass SEO, speed, and accessibility tests with flying colours. 

But all of these benefits are really just what people expect from a website in this day and age.

For our agency, Refoundry has saved countless hours on builds and QA. And that has increased profitability. 

How does Refoundry work?

Refoundry enhances the Gutenberg site editor and block-based system. It essentially gives you all of the best parts of the WordPress experience, without the frustrating drawbacks.

Once you’ve installed and configured the plugin, you unlock the ability to manage every single element of the page within the visual editor. Nothing is hard-coded into the theme, so you don’t need to write code or hire a developer. 

Anyone who builds with Refoundry has complete control over all layouts, visual styles, block settings, navigation elements, content, authoring controls, and more. And as you work, Refoundry is generating lightweight, SEO-friendly code. This adds up to faster page speeds, total creative freedom, and the ability to launch faster. 

It also means that everyone on an agency team can work on websites. Designers, content strategists, project managers, and SEOs can edit the site, without writing code. (Don’t worry, you can also manage authoring controls and even lock blocks to avoid accidents.) 

For Developers

Being low-code doesn’t mean Refoundry has less functionality, less customization, or less for developers to do.

“From search to filters, from post content to logins and beyond, Refoundry can do whatever is needed,” Johnston said. “Anything you can do with CSS, HTML, or JavaScript, you can do 80-90% of that same work without code using Refoundry. Then you only have to write code for the remaining 10-20% of your build.

“Think of it this way: how much more fun would cooking be if all of the prep work was done for you?” said Johnston. 

“We built Refoundry to speed up and systemize 80-90% of the predictable, repeatable parts of all web projects, and we’re continuing to build new features that will push that percentage even higher. But everything still works the way WordPress itself does, developers can add or extend anything you want, the same way you do now.” 

Being able to build faster means developers can easily keep up with an agency’s build queue and have time left over. Less time on production work and fixing bugs means more time for fun stuff like developing animations, customizing the blocks, or professional development to push your agency’s capabilities even further. 

For Designers, Strategists, and Creators

Refoundry doesn’t just save time for builders – everyone who needs to work on a site or manage content will find it faster and easier to do your work. 

• You can copy/paste content from an outside doc and paste it into Refoundry
• The plugin will detect all formatting (such as headings, paragraphs, links, and lists), automatically create the correct blocks, and apply your global styles
• You can copy/paste blocks from one page to another, or even from one website to another 
• You can also search for blocks by name and add them in one click
• Or our add-on build assistant, ScoutAI, can fetch and even recommend blocks for you
• And you can drag and drop any blocks to instantly change their order within the page

How is Refoundry different from other site builders?

Refoundry is different from any other site builder on the market. It had to be, to accomplish our goals. 

There are website builders that are independent platforms. They require you to use their proprietary code and themes. There are also other website builder plugins that work with WordPress, but still require a theme and templates that only developers can alter.

Refoundry has no theme – everything you could possibly need to edit can be done through global settings and the visual editor. And because it’s built for WordPress, you get the benefit of using the world’s leading CMS and open source code that developers can easily customize. 

Refoundry’s templates, available to Pro users, are responsive components crafted by our own designers and builders. Anyone can customize them using the settings in the editor, or save them as reusable content. 

On that note, the most exciting element of Refoundry is the Reusable Component Blocks. Pro users get access to a big library of template parts and RCBs, which you can use together to create repeatable layouts (or build your own RCBs). 

A Reusable Component Block is a layout or group of blocks saved as repeatable content. You can even save whole page layouts as an RCB. These blocks can be added to any page or post with a couple of clicks. They can all be edited globally, or they can be edited locally to feature unique content or styles in the same layout. 

This is where the massive time-savings and flexibility truly shine. 

How can you try Refoundry?

Refoundry can be downloaded for free at any time, and is coming soon to the WordPress plugin store. We’ve created a huge support library to help everyone get the most out of the plugin, and real humans are available to provide training and fixes.  

A Pro plan gives you access to all of the advanced features like Reusable Component Blocks, animations and effects, custom fields, and dedicated support.

Refoundry add-ons include:

• Hosting through Refoundry’s partnership with Pantheon
• Our AI build assistant, Scout
• Training and support retainers to help with onboarding 

Want to know more?

We know changing your tools and processes in any way is a huge decision for agencies. You can book a demo at any time, no strings attached. We’ll check in about exactly what you want to see, so we don’t waste your time. 

Come see what all the fuss is about. We can’t wait to show you what Refoundry can do.