Bye WordPress, welcome Next.js

WordPress runs a huge share of the web, and for a long time it was the sensible default: install it, pick a theme, add plugins, publish. We have run WordPress sites and we have replaced them. muaythaitickets.net was one. What follows is not a rant about WordPress; it is a plain account of what changes when the same site is built on Next.js, and why we now start there.

What a WordPress site actually is

Every page view on a classic WordPress site is a PHP process talking to a MySQL database, loading the theme, running every active plugin, and assembling HTML on the spot. Caching plugins paper over this, and they work until a cookie, a query string or a logged-in user bypasses them. The site is also a server that accepts logins, uploads and form posts around the clock, which is why a large share of the security updates you see are for plugins rather than WordPress itself.

The site you end up with is the sum of a theme you did not write, a page builder that generates its own markup, and a dozen plugins with their own scripts and styles. That is where the slow scores come from, and it is why removing anything feels risky.

What a Next.js site is

Next.js is a framework for building the site as code, in TypeScript, from components. The important part for a business site is not the framework itself but what it lets us do:

• Pages are built ahead of time. A marketing page is rendered to static HTML once, at deploy, and served from a CDN edge near the visitor. There is no database call and no PHP process behind a page view. This is the single biggest reason the sites in our work section load in under a second on a phone.
• JavaScript only where a click has to do something. A form, a menu, a checkout step. Everything else ships as HTML and CSS. The learning site we run sends about six kilobytes of script on its public pages; a typical WordPress theme sends hundreds.
• No plugin surface. Features are code we wrote or libraries we chose, pinned to a version, updated through a pull request that runs the tests. There is no admin panel accepting logins from the whole internet unless you need one.
• Images, fonts and metadata are part of the build. Correct sizes, modern formats, one font file, titles and structured data generated from the same content that renders the page, so they cannot drift apart.
• A real deploy pipeline. Push to the repository, the build runs, the tests run, the new version goes live with no downtime, and the previous version is one command away. Editing a live site through an admin panel with no backup is how WordPress sites die on a Friday afternoon.

"But we need to edit pages"

Then you get a CMS, not a page builder. We use Payload CMS behind Next.js when a team edits content regularly: a clean admin, fields that match the design, drafts and previews, and none of the plugin zoo. When a site changes a few times a year, plain content files with a staging preview are cheaper and safer, and the editor is whoever can write a sentence.

Either way the content lives in one structured place and the pages are generated from it. The design cannot be broken by pasting from Word.

What the migration keeps

A migration that loses rankings is a failed migration. The process we run is boring on purpose: crawl the old site, list every URL with its traffic, keep the ones that earn, redirect the rest one to one, retire the junk with a 410, and watch Search Console for a month after the switch. Titles, descriptions and structured data are usually better after the move because they are generated, not typed into a plugin box per page. The migration service page has the steps.

What it costs

More up front than a theme, less over the years. There is no plugin licence renewal, no page-builder subscription, no premium theme, no hosting tier for the caching layer, and no emergency invoice when an update breaks the site. Hosting is one small server with a CDN in front, and we can run it for you or hand it over documented.

When WordPress is still the right answer

A site that lives on a specific plugin ecosystem, a team that already runs dozens of WordPress sites well, or a budget that only covers a theme. We say so when that is the case. For a business site that has to be fast, secure and still working in three years, we start with Next.js, and we have not regretted it once.