Our Journey

Before the New Year starts, I want to put down in words the plans I have this year to lead a fascinating project at work: migrating multiple high-traffic WordPress websites to a modern, scalable, and performant headless architecture. Our goal is to create lightning-fast, flexible, and future-proof websites that can grow with our businesses. This post outlines our migration plan and the reasoning behind the tools and technologies we chose.

Why Migrate from WordPress?

WordPress has served us well for many years, but as our businesses grew, so did the demands on our websites. The limitations we faced included:

• Performance Bottlenecks: Slower page loads and server strain during high traffic. These bottlenecks became more noticeable over the past year, and our WordPress site was custom-built to run on a hosting architecture that couldn't handle the spikes in traffic we would experience.
• Limited Scalability: Handling 200,000+ sessions per month requires robust solutions.
• Customization Challenges: Difficulty managing content and code for multiple sites.
• Developer Workflow Constraints: WordPress’s monolithic structure makes modern developer workflows harder to implement.

To address these, we decided to embrace a headless architecture built around Next.js, Sanity.io, and other cutting-edge tools. This decision was driven by our commitment to creating websites that offer a superior user experience, streamline our development processes, and support our growing business needs.

Our New Architecture: A Modern Approach

Here’s an overview of the stack we’re building and some insights into why we chose each tool/tech:

1. Frontend:

   • Next.js: This tool offers fast, server-side rendering and static generation for performance and SEO. Its flexibility allows us to create dynamic and engaging user interfaces.
     • We also feel that Next.js will be a standard-bearer for all JavaScript applications in the future, and our engineering team is most familiar with the framework.
   • Storybook: A UI component library for consistent design and reusable components across sites. This ensures that our branding remains cohesive and simplifies the design process. We can simply define style libraries inside each brand's Next.js application with Tailwind.

2. Content Management:

   • Sanity.io: A headless CMS to manage product data, blogs, and landing pages. Its real-time collaboration and GROQ queries make it an ideal choice for our multi-site setup.

3. E-Commerce Backend:

   • Medusa.js: A customizable, open-source solution for managing cart, checkout, and inventory functionality. This ensures a seamless shopping experience for our customers.

4. Hosting and Deployment:

   • Cloudflare Pages: Blazing-fast CDN with edge caching for seamless delivery. This enhances our site’s global performance.

5. Payment Processing:

   • Stripe: Secure, scalable payments integration to handle transactions efficiently.

6. Analytics and Monitoring:

   • Cloudflare Analytics and Google Analytics for insights into performance and user behavior. These tools help us make data-driven decisions.

Steps in Our Migration Process

Here’s how we’re tackling the migration:

1. Planning and Discovery

• Audit Existing Sites: We cataloged all pages, media, and functionality from the WordPress sites. This step ensures no content or critical features are left behind.
• Traffic Analysis: With 200-250k combined sessions per month, we identified high-priority pages and performance pain points. Understanding user behavior helps us prioritize features and optimizations.
• Stakeholder Alignment: I collaborated with teams in marketing, design, and development to ensure the new architecture meets their needs. Their input was crucial in defining the project scope.

2. Setting Up the New Stack

• Sanity Content Models: We’ve designed schemas for blogs, landing pages, and product catalogs. Sanity’s flexibility allows us to tailor the CMS precisely to our needs, making content management more intuitive.
• Storybook Component Library: To standardize design, we built reusable React components for headers, footers, and other UI elements. This approach saves development time and ensures consistency.
• Next.js Applications: Created individual apps for each site, enabling independent deployment and scaling. This modular setup also simplifies future updates and maintenance.

3. Migrating Content

• Automated migration scripts are being developed to move WordPress data (posts, pages, products) to Sanity. This minimizes manual effort and reduces the risk of errors. 
• Media assets are being optimized and hosted on a dedicated CDN for faster delivery. Optimizing images and videos will enhance the user experience.
• On our WordPress sites, image alt tags were populated with the image's title, which was pulled from the filename or from the name of the page it was uploaded to. Those tags weren't always descriptive, and they very rarely served an accessibility purpose. Before loading all our images into the CDN, we plan to run every image present on the site through a machine vision alt text-generator AI algorithm. This is how we will create descriptive alt tags on our new sites.

4. Implementing E-Commerce Functionality

• Medusa.js will handle all backend e-commerce workflows, from inventory management to checkout. Product data will be synced with Sanity for a seamless editing experience, ensuring our content and commerce operations are fully integrated.

5. Testing and Optimization

• We’re using performance testing tools like Lighthouse and WebPageTest to benchmark site speed. Regular testing helps us identify and fix potential bottlenecks.
• Load testing ensures the new setup can handle peak traffic without issues, ensuring reliability during high-demand periods.

6. Deployment

• Staggered launches for each site to minimize downtime and troubleshoot issues individually. This phased approach allows us to address any challenges proactively.
• Continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) pipelines ensure smooth updates post-launch. Automated deployments reduce manual errors and speed up release cycles.

Key Benefits of the New Architecture

1. Improved Performance: Faster load times with static and server-rendered pages. Edge caching ensures users worldwide have a smooth experience, boosting satisfaction and engagement. Static and server-rendered pages load faster. Edge caching ensures a smooth experience for users worldwide
2. Better Scalability: Headless architecture separates backend logic from frontend delivery, allowing independent scaling. This is critical as our traffic continues to grow.
3. Enhanced Developer Productivity: Modern frameworks and workflows enable our team to build, test, and deploy faster. This agility gives us a competitive edge.
4. Rich Editing Experience: Sanity’s intuitive UI and real-time collaboration tools empower our content team to work more efficiently, freeing up developers to focus on new features.
5. Future-Proofing: Modular architecture makes it easy to integrate new features and technologies as our needs evolve. This flexibility ensures our stack remains relevant for years to come.

Looking Ahead

This migration represents a significant step forward for our digital presence. By investing in a modern, headless stack, we’re not just solving today’s problems—we’re laying the groundwork for future growth. This system's flexibility and scalability will empower our teams to create better user experiences, drive more conversions, and continue to grow our businesses.

Stay tuned for updates as we complete this journey. I’ll share insights, challenges, and lessons learned along the way. If you’re considering a similar migration, feel free to reach out. I’d love to connect and share experiences!