Migrating from WordPress to React: A Guide to Domain, Server and Architecture

WordPress is a good starting point for most corporate websites. As a site grows, however, plugin sprawl, multilingual content management, security updates and performance issues steadily increase the maintenance burden. We recently moved a corporate website published in four languages, with more than 200 pages and dozens of blog posts, from WordPress to a modern architecture. In this post we share our decisions and the lessons learned for teams planning a similar migration.

Why Our Client Moved Away from WordPress

Plugin dependency: Separate plugins handled multilingual content, forms, SEO and caching. Every update was a separate risk.

Performance: Pages were generated through PHP and the database on every request, and caching plugins never fully solved it.

Security surface: An exposed admin area, outdated plugins and theme files required constant attention.

Content structure: The complex HTML produced by page builders made it hard to reuse content across channels.

The New Architecture: Three Parts, One Database

We designed the new system as three independent parts:

Website (Next.js / React): Pages are generated as static HTML at build time. Visitors receive ready-made files without any server-side code running.

Content API (ASP.NET Core + SQL Server): The single source of truth for pages, posts, forms and settings. Public endpoints use a short-lived output cache.

Admin panel (Next.js): Editors manage pages, posts, translations and documents here, with role-based permissions and an audit log.

The biggest gain is combining the speed of a static site with dynamic content management. A change saved in the panel is refreshed from the API when the page opens, without waiting for a rebuild, while regular builds ensure search engines always see the full content.

Content Blocks

Instead of free-form HTML, content is stored as structured blocks: headings, paragraphs, lists, tables and images. This lets us validate content, generate a table of contents automatically and reuse the same data across different designs.

Multilingual Content

All language versions of a page or post are kept under a single record. If a translation is missing, visitors see the default-language content with a short notice. Switching language takes users to the translation of the same content rather than the home page, and hreflang tags and the sitemap are generated automatically.

Multiple Sites from One Panel

We designed the database for multiple sites from day one. Several sites with different domains can be managed from the same panel, with separate permissions for which sites each user can access.

Content Migration: From WordPress to the Database

Moving hundreds of pages by hand would have been slow and error-prone, so we built a migration tool:

Pages, posts, categories and language mappings were pulled via the WordPress REST API.

Page-builder HTML was cleaned and converted into content blocks.

Content in different languages was linked to the same record using the existing translation relationships.

Images were moved to our own server and the URLs in the content were updated.

Automated checks after import found and fixed broken tables, leftover tags and text in the wrong language.

Key lesson: Make the migration tool idempotent. You will need to run it several times while editors keep publishing on the live site.

Migrating Without Losing SEO

The most important success criterion was keeping search rankings. To achieve this we:

Kept URLs exactly the same , including trailing slashes.

Added 301 redirects for changed URLs, pointing old category and archive pages to the closest new page.

Migrated meta titles and descriptions and made missing ones editable in the panel.

Generate the sitemap and hreflang tags automatically on every build.

Submitted the new sitemap in Search Console after launch and monitored crawl errors.

Server and Hosting

To avoid changing the existing infrastructure, we run the new system on the same Windows server with Plesk and IIS. The .NET application serves the API as well as the static site and admin panel files, so there is a single application pool and a single release package.

Secrets live outside the code: database connections, session keys and bot-protection keys are stored only in the server's environment settings, never in the repository.

One-package releases: the API, site and panel are deployed as a single zip file, and server configuration files are left untouched.

Database changes via scripts: the live database is never overwritten. Changes are applied with re-runnable SQL scripts that do not overwrite edits made manually in the meantime.

Domain and DNS Migration

Two different operations are often confused here:

Pointing the site to a new server only means changing DNS records (A / CNAME). The domain stays with the same registrar.

Transferring the domain to another registrar is a separate process: unlock the domain, obtain the transfer (EPP) code and start the transfer at the new registrar. Back up your existing DNS records first so nothing is lost.

The steps we followed for a seamless cutover:

A few days before the move, we lowered the TTL of the DNS records (e.g. 300 seconds).

We published the new site on a temporary address and tested every page and form.

We prepared the SSL certificate for the new setup in advance.

We left the email records (MX, SPF, DKIM, DMARC) untouched and changed only the web records.

At cutover we updated the DNS record and kept the old site running as a fallback for a while.

After launch we monitored 404 logs and added any missing redirects.

Security and Data Protection

Forms use invisible bot protection and rate limiting.

Analytics and third-party content load only after the visitor gives cookie consent.

Form and application data is deleted automatically when its retention period ends.

Visit statistics are collected without cookies, using masked IP addresses.

Conclusion

Leaving WordPress is not the right choice for every project. For multilingual, frequently updated corporate sites with high security expectations, however, a static front end with an API and a custom admin panel offers clear advantages in speed, security and maintainability. The key to success lies less in the technology than in the planning: preserve your URLs, migrate content cleanly and make every step of the cutover reversible.

If you are planning a similar migration, we would be happy to help at every stage, from analysing your current site to post-launch monitoring.