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Headless WordPress Migration

wp-admin RetainedLighthouse 95+ISR & Server Components

Headless WordPress with Next.js Frontend

Your Editorial Team Keeps wp-admin — Google Sees a Sub‑Second Site

95+

Lighthouse Score

Performance / Accessibility

43%

Web Runs on WP

Your content stays put

Editorial Disruption

Same wp-admin workflow

<1s

Time to Interactive

ISR + edge caching

What Headless WordPress Actually Decouples — And What Stays Put

Your content team logs into wp-admin exactly as they do now. Your developers pull that content through REST or WPGraphQL and render it with Next.js Server Components, cached at 100+ edge locations. The WordPress database, ACF fields, user roles, plugin ecosystem — all untouched. What dies: the PHP theme layer that keeps your Lighthouse mobile score between 40 and 55, the attack surface of wp-login exposed to the public internet, and the single point of failure where one bad plugin update kills editorial access and visitor experience in the same stroke. Incremental Static Regeneration pre-renders pages on-demand and revalidates them in the background, so your traffic spikes hit a CDN, not your origin server.

Waar projecten falen

Lighthouse mobile scores stuck between 40 and 55, even after you've thrown every caching plugin at it Google penalizes slow pages in search rankings, and every 100ms delay eats into your conversions.

PHP themes are a single point of failure One bad plugin update can take everything down at once — editors and visitors lose access together.

Editors like wp-admin Developers hate writing PHP templates. And hiring decent frontend talent gets harder and more expensive every year.

WordPress exposes your entire application stack to the public internet Brute-force attacks on wp-login, XML-RPC exploits, plugin vulnerabilities — they're all live attack surfaces, right now.

Page builders and shortcodes lock your content inside rendering engines that fight performance That content also becomes non-portable — you can't pipe it to a mobile app or any other channel without a fight.

Server-rendered PHP can't keep up with static or ISR delivery at the edge Traffic spikes strain your server, push up hosting costs, and degrade the experience for everyone hitting your site at the same time.

Compliance

WPGraphQL Integration

We wire up WPGraphQL to expose posts, pages, custom post types, ACF fields, and Yoast metadata as efficient GraphQL queries. No over-fetching, no wasted bandwidth.

Incremental Static Regeneration

Pages get statically generated at build time and revalidated in the background on a configurable interval. Visitors always hit a cached edge response while the content stays current behind the scenes.

Draft Preview for Editors

Next.js Draft Mode intercepts preview clicks from wp-admin and renders unpublished content through the production frontend. Editors see exactly what visitors will see — no surprises, no "it looked different in preview."

SEO Metadata Pipeline

Yoast and Rank Math data flows through the API into Next.js generateMetadata. Titles, descriptions, Open Graph tags, canonical URLs, JSON-LD structured data — all handled automatically.

Attack Surface Reduction

Your WordPress instance sits behind a firewall with no public theme rendering. Only the API endpoint is exposed, which cuts out most of the common WordPress exploit vectors.

On-Publish Revalidation

A lightweight webhook fires the moment an editor hits Publish. That triggers on-demand ISR, so updated content goes live in seconds — no full rebuild required.

Wat we bouwen

Escape Lighthouse mobile scores trapped between 40 and 55 despite every caching plugin you've installed

Ship Lighthouse 95+ on mobile with Server Components that eliminate client-side JavaScript overhead and trim Time to Interactive

Eliminate the single point of failure where one plugin update crashes both your editorial interface and your public site

Serve static and ISR pages from 100+ edge nodes so your site stays live even if the WordPress origin goes down entirely

Stop forcing frontend developers to write PHP templates when React talent is cheaper and easier to hire

Map ACF Pro custom fields and repeater blocks to typed TypeScript interfaces for predictable, compile-time-safe rendering

Close the attack surface of wp-login, XML-RPC, and plugin vulnerabilities exposed to the public internet

Run WordPress media library images through automatic WebP/AVIF conversion, lazy loading, and responsive srcsets via Next.js Image

Break free from page builders and shortcodes that lock your content inside non-portable rendering engines

Generate dynamic XML sitemaps and RSS feeds at build time from your content graph and auto-submit them to Search Console

End the cycle where traffic spikes strain your server, inflate hosting costs, and slow the site for everyone

Expose WPML or Polylang locale data via the API and route it through Next.js i18n with intact hreflang tags for every language

Ons proces

WordPress Audit & API Setup

We start with an audit of your existing WordPress instance — plugins, custom post types, ACF fields, SEO configuration. We install WPGraphQL, expose all content types, and lock down the public-facing PHP layer.

Week 1

Next.js Frontend Build

Then we scaffold the Next.js app with App Router, map every WordPress template to a React component, and configure ISR with tuned revalidation intervals. Draft Mode preview gets wired up for your editors at this stage.

Weeks 2–3

SEO & Performance Tuning

Yoast and Rank Math metadata gets piped into generateMetadata. We optimize images, implement structured data, configure sitemap generation, and keep iterating until every Lighthouse category is clearing 95.

Week 4

Editor Training & QA

Your content team then tests the full editorial workflow end to end — draft, preview, publish, revalidate. We work through every edge case: custom fields, scheduled posts, revision history, multi-author workflows.

Week 5

Deploy & Monitor

Finally, we deploy to Vercel with production caching, configure on-publish webhooks, set up uptime monitoring for both the WordPress API and the Next.js frontend, and stay on for 30 days of post-launch support.

Week 6

Next.jsWordPressWPGraphQLVercelACF ProYoast SEO APIReact Server Components

Veelgestelde vragen

Moeten mijn editors een nieuw CMS leren?

Nee. De wp-admin experience is identiek — hetzelfde dashboard, dezelfde editor, dezelfde plugin-interfaces. De enige zichtbare verandering is dat het klikken op Preview door de Next.js frontend gaat via Draft Mode in plaats van een PHP-thema te laden. De meeste editors merken dit niet eens op, behalve dat previews sneller laden.

Werken mijn bestaande WordPress-plugins nog?

Backend-plugins zoals ACF, Yoast, Gravity Forms en WooCommerce werken normaal door. Plugins die HTML injecteren via PHP hooks — visuele page builders bijvoorbeeld — moeten worden vervangen door React-componenten. We controleren elke plugin tijdens discovery en markeren alles wat migratie nodig heeft voordat we een regel code aanraken.

Hoe gaat headless WordPress om met SEO zonder PHP-thema?

Zowel Yoast als Rank Math stellen alle SEO-metadata beschikbaar via de REST API en WPGraphQL. We halen titels, meta-beschrijvingen, Open Graph-tags, canonieke URL's en schema-markup naar Next.js generateMetadata. De output komt overeen met wat je eerder had — meestal beter — en je krijgt bovendien drastisch snellere paginalaadtijden, wat direct helpt bij rankings.

Welke Lighthouse-score kan ik realistisch verwachten?

We streven naar 95+ voor Performance, Accessibility, Best Practices en SEO op zowel mobiel als desktop. Monolithisch WordPress scoort doorgaans 40–55 op mobiel. Static generation, ISR, edge caching en geoptimaliseerde afbeeldingsverzending pushen deze nummers consistent boven 95 in productie.

Wat gebeurt er met mijn site als de WordPress-server uitvalt?

Niets wat bezoekers zouden opmerken. Next.js serveert vooraf gegenereerde pagina's uit de edge cache, dus de frontend blijft volledig operationeel, zelfs tijdens een WordPress-uitval. Editors kunnen geen nieuwe content publiceren totdat de backend herstelt, maar bezoekers zien nul downtime. Dat is een echt voordeel op het gebied van veerkracht ten opzichte van monolithisch WordPress.

Hoe lang duurt een headless WordPress-migratie?

Een typische site — onder de 200 pagina's, standaard custom post types, ACF-velden — duurt 5–6 weken van kickoff tot productie. Grotere projecten met WooCommerce, meertalige ondersteuning of complexe aangepaste plugin-logica kunnen 8–10 weken duren. We bepalen alles nauwkeurig tijdens discovery, dus niets verrast je halverwege het project.

Headless WordPress Migration from $8,000

Fixed-fee. 30-day post-launch support included.

See all packages →

WordPress to Next.js Migration Next.js Development Core Web Vitals Optimization Core Web Vitals & Jamstack Guide

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