Two ways to do it
- •Headless WordPress. Editors keep the WordPress admin they know. Next.js reads the content through the REST API or WPGraphQL and renders the pages. Best when a non-technical team publishes often.
- •Full move. Content leaves WordPress for Markdown, MDX or another headless CMS. Best when developers own the content and WordPress has become overhead.
We will recommend one after seeing who edits the site and how often.
Why teams make this move
Static and server-rendered pages, served from the edge.
React components instead of theme overrides.
A smaller public attack surface when WordPress sits behind the scenes, or is gone.
What moves, what gets rebuilt, what stays behind
Comes across as it is
- Posts, pages, custom post types
- Categories, tags, authors
- Media library
- SEO titles, descriptions, canonicals
- Redirect rules
Built again on the new platform
- Templates and layouts as React components
- Forms (WordPress form plugins do not render in Next.js)
- Search, filtering, pagination
- XML sitemap and robots.txt
- Schema markup, template by template
Left on the old platform
- Theme and page builder markup
- Plugins that change the front end
- Shortcodes (converted or removed)
- WordPress-generated feeds you no longer need
How we run it
- 01Inventory every URL.Sitemap, Search Console, 12 months of analytics landing pages, backlinks and a full crawl. Plus a question for you: which links do you send people directly?
- 02Choose headless or full move,and the content source.
- 03Decide the URL rules before building.WordPress uses trailing slashes, Next.js drops them by default. Pick one and redirect the other in one hop.
- 04Build and run a parity check on staging.Every old URL requested against the new build, every 404 and every homepage redirect listed.
- 05Launch, then test on production.Staging passes do not count until production passes.
- 06Watch Search Console daily for the first weeks,then weekly.
Where this usually goes wrong
Vercel adds an X-Robots-Tag: noindex header to preview deployments by default. The production domain must not carry it.
Every URL on the old site ended in a slash. If the new one does not, every internal link and backlink hits a redirect.
Next.js sends 308 for permanent redirects. Google treats both as permanent, so this is fine, but your team and your tools should expect it.
Forms, landing pages and PDFs linked from emails rarely show up in search data.
From our logs
From our logs
On the staging build of a WordPress to Next.js move we are finishing now, a first parity check across the 94 unique URLs in the old inventory found 7 returning 404 and 2 redirecting to the homepage. The old site’s category sitemap listed 26 URLs, and staging had 5, so about 21 more redirects went onto the list.
From our logs
On the same move, the new build left out an application form the client sends directly to its customers. It was not indexed, so search data made it look unimportant. The client had flagged it, and it came up again in a review call before launch.
We wrote up the full test plan in how we test websites with AI.
What we won’t promise
A faster site does not guarantee better rankings, and Google needs time to recrawl any moved site. We promise the inventory, the redirect map and the tests before and after launch.
Frequently asked questions
Is headless WordPress better than leaving WordPress entirely?+
If your marketing team publishes weekly, usually yes: they keep the editor they know. If developers write all the content, a full move removes a system you no longer need.
Will our Yoast or Rank Math settings carry over?+
The values do: titles, descriptions, canonicals and noindex flags can be read from WordPress and rendered by Next.js. The plugin itself stops doing anything on the front end, so the sitemap and schema are rebuilt.
Where will the site be hosted?+
Usually Vercel, though Next.js runs elsewhere too. With headless WordPress, WordPress still needs its own hosting.
Can our editors still preview drafts?+
Yes, if preview mode is built in. It is part of our scope for headless builds.
Going the other way?+
See Next.js to WordPress.