Full-Stack Application Media & Publishing
WordPress to Next.js Migration — 4x Faster, Zero Downtime
The challenge
A digital media company publishing 50+ articles per week had outgrown WordPress. Their site loaded in 8+ seconds on mobile, plugins conflicted constantly, and the editorial team hated the clunky editing experience. SEO rankings were tanking because Core Web Vitals were in the red. A failed migration attempt 6 months prior had left the team terrified of trying again.
What we built
We executed a seamless zero-downtime migration from WordPress to Next.js with Sanity as the headless CMS.
- 01
Content Migration to Sanity CMS
Built a Python migration script that transferred 4,200+ articles, 12,000 images, author profiles, categories, and SEO metadata from WordPress to Sanity — preserving every URL slug, redirect, and internal link for zero SEO disruption.
- 02
Next.js Frontend on Vercel
Rebuilt the entire frontend in Next.js 14 with ISR (Incremental Static Regeneration). Articles load in under 1 second with perfect Lighthouse scores. Implemented structured data markup for rich snippets and a custom reading progress bar.
- 03
Editorial Workflow in Sanity Studio
Customized Sanity Studio with real-time collaboration, scheduled publishing, SEO previews, and an AI-powered headline analyzer. Editors can preview articles exactly as they'll appear on the live site before publishing.
- 04
Zero-Downtime Cutover Strategy
Used Vercel's edge network for a gradual rollout — 10%, 25%, 50%, 100% of traffic over 4 days. Monitored Core Web Vitals, 404 rates, and SEO indexing at each stage. Not a single minute of downtime.
Built with
Delivered in 8 weeks
Next.js
Frontend framework & ISR
Sanity
Headless CMS & editorial workflow
Vercel
Edge deployment & gradual rollout
Python
Content migration scripts
Cloudflare
CDN & image optimization
The outcome
Page load times dropped from 8 seconds to under 2 seconds. Organic search traffic increased 68% within 90 days as Core Web Vitals turned green. The editorial team publishes 30% faster with the new CMS, and the site handles 10x the concurrent traffic without breaking a sweat.
- Faster Page Loads
- 4x
- Organic Traffic
- +68%
- Lighthouse Score
- 100/100
- Downtime
- 0min
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