Platform migration
Move off WordPress, Joomla or Drupal — and stop paying for the parts you don't use.
Same content, same URLs, same editing. A static or plain-PHP site that's cheap to host and has no admin panel to break into.
You probably recognise some of this
Your hosting bill went up again. Something breaks after every update. You're paying for four plugin licences and you can't remember what two of them do. The site takes six seconds on a phone. Your developer left in 2019 and nobody knows how it's wired.
None of that is unusual and none of it is your fault. It is what happens when a site is built on a platform that assumes constant maintenance, and then you stop having someone to do the maintaining.
What you're moving from
The platforms we move people off most often — and everything else.
WordPress
Plugin licences renewing on their own, an update that breaks the theme every few months, and a database full of page-builder shortcodes. We pull out the posts, pages, categories, tags, media and users — and every URL.
Joomla
Usually the hardest, because the documentation left with whoever built it. We read the database directly, map articles and sections onto a content model, and recover the media tree.
Drupal
Drupal 7 is end-of-life and Drupal 9 was a rebuild rather than an upgrade. If you are looking at a five-figure quote just to stay where you are, moving off is worth costing properly.
Something else
Wix, Squarespace, handmade PHP, static HTML from 2011. If the content can be reached it can be moved. Ask, and we will tell you honestly how hard it looks.
How a migration actually goes
Four steps. You see the output of each one before the next begins.
- 01
Inventory and export
Every URL, every asset, every form. We crawl what is live rather than trusting the menu, because the menu is always a subset. You get the list before anything is built.
- 02
Content model in git
Your content becomes structured files with a schema — collections, fields, validation. This is the step that stops the next migration being as hard as this one.
- 03
Rebuild the front end
Astro, or plain PHP where there is genuinely an application. Same content, same structure, a fraction of the page weight. Editors get a git-backed editor in the browser.
- 04
Redirect map, launch, watch
The redirect map is built before the site is, from the crawl in step one. After launch we watch the logs for a month and fix whatever the crawl missed.
| Measure | Before — managed CMS | After — static build |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting, per month | €25–60 | €0–5 |
| Plugin and licence renewals | €200–600 a year | None |
| Update work | Monthly, and it can break the site | None — there is no runtime to patch |
| Admin surface on the internet | Login, XML-RPC, REST, plugin endpoints | None |
| Backup story | Plugin or host snapshots | The git history is the backup |
| Editing | WYSIWYG over a database | Git-backed editor in the browser |
| Rebuild in three years | Depends on the plugins still existing | npm install, npm run build |
The redirect map is the whole job
Search engines and other people's links are your site's inheritance. Losing them is the one migration mistake that cannot be repaired afterwards, so we build the map first and treat it as the specification.
We crawl what is live rather than reading the navigation, because the navigation is always a subset — old permalink formats, tag archives, paginated listings and a PDF someone linked from a forum in 2014 are all real URLs that real people still follow.
Built before the site
From a crawl, not from the menu.
Checked after launch
We watch the logs for a month and fix what the crawl missed.
Kept for years
Redirects stay in place. They cost nothing to keep and everything to remove.
Questions we get every time
Will my URLs change?
No. We build the redirect map before we build the site, from a crawl of everything currently live — including old permalink formats and archive pages that are not in your menu. Every URL on the sites we have moved so far still resolves.
Will I lose my editor?
No. You get a git-backed editor in the browser with your own fields — headings, images, links, blocks — and a preview. It is more constrained than a page builder on purpose: editors cannot break the layout, and an update cannot break the site.
What about my contact forms?
They keep working. A static site posts to a form endpoint or a small function rather than to the CMS. Spam filtering and the notification email carry over.
I have a shop. Can you move that?
Sometimes. A catalogue with a checkout can move; a shop with subscriptions, complex tax rules or deep plugin dependencies is often better left where it is and made faster instead. We tell you which yours is before quoting.
My site is multilingual.
That is fine, and it is usually the part that reveals how much of the old content is stale. Expect the inventory step to take longer, and expect to make some editorial decisions.
How long does it take?
A 40-page site is typically four to six weeks, and most of that is content decisions rather than code. Larger sites scale with the number of distinct page types, not the number of pages.
What does it cost?
The audit is a fixed fee and produces a written plan with a number on it. The build is quoted from that plan. If the plan says moving is not worth it for you, you have paid for the audit and nothing else.
Can I go back?
Your old site keeps running until launch, and you keep the export. You also keep the new repository — if you stop working with us, nothing is locked to us.
Send us your URL.
Tell us what you're running and what it costs you a month. You'll get an honest answer about whether moving is worth it — including no.