End-to-end migration from theme-rendered WordPress to a headless Next.js + GraphQL stack.
Overview
We take monolithic WordPress sites and separate the CMS from the frontend. Editors keep the admin they know. Your web product ships as a Next.js application fed by GraphQL.
Includes content modeling, WPGraphQL schema design, Next.js route rebuilds, redirects, preview strategy, and a staged production cutover. Mobile apps are not required—and are quoted separately when you want them.
Why clients invest here: You keep years of content and editorial muscle while unlocking product-style deploys, better Core Web Vitals headroom, and a typed API that can later feed mobile—without forcing a CMS replacement.
Positioning
Monolithic themes slow every redesign. Plugins fight your performance budget. And the frontend you want cannot live inside a PHP theme forever.
A headless migration separates content from presentation: editors stay in WordPress, engineers ship Next.js, and GraphQL becomes the contract between them.
Architecture
Process
A phased path from audit to launch, designed for zero content loss and calm web cutovers.
We inventory content types, plugins, templates, SEO surfaces, and editorial workflows. You leave with a migration map: what moves, what retires, and what stays in WordPress.
We design the GraphQL schema—types, relationships, and field contracts—so Next.js pages fetch exactly what they need. Preview and draft strategies land here, not as an afterthought.
We rebuild routes in Next.js, wire WPGraphQL, preserve URLs with redirects, and stage content parity checks. Cutover is phased: soft launch, traffic shift, then theme retirement.
We harden caching, Core Web Vitals, monitoring, and editor training. Retainers cover schema changes, new content types, and performance as the product evolves.
Client advantages
Separating WordPress from the frontend unlocks modern delivery without forcing editors onto a new CMS—or throwing away years of content.
The CMS stays the source of truth. Content teams keep drafts, media, and workflows while the experience layer ships as Next.js.
Preview deployments, component-driven UI, and Core Web Vitals–minded rendering replace theme FTP drops and fragile page builders.
Redirect maps and parity checks protect rankings during cutover so marketing does not restart from zero.
WPGraphQL becomes the contract for web—and optionally mobile—so you are not maintaining parallel content stacks later.
Industry context
+8%
Google and Deloitte’s Milliseconds Make Millions study tied small speed gains to measurable conversion lifts—headless frontends are built to chase those gains.
Source: Google / Deloitte via web.dev (opens in a new tab)+8%
Vodafone Italy’s Core Web Vitals work shows how Largest Contentful Paint improvements can map to revenue.
Source: web.dev case studies (opens in a new tab)~41%
Headless migrations meet teams where content already lives instead of forcing a full CMS replacement.
Source: W3Techs (opens in a new tab)Published research on site speed and WordPress scale—not CodeFern client guarantees.
FAQ
Straight answers about how this engagement usually works.
Editors keep WordPress as the CMS while the public site ships as Next.js, connected through WPGraphQL—so content and presentation are no longer locked in one PHP theme.
No. WordPress stays the source of truth for drafts, media, and publishing. The change is the frontend experience layer, not a forced CMS replacement.
Redirect maps, URL parity checks, and staged launches protect rankings so marketing does not restart from zero when the new frontend goes live.
Not by default. Mobile is a sibling engagement. When useful, the same GraphQL API can later feed a React Native app—but a web migration does not require an app.
Next step
Tell us about your current stack and goals. We will map whether Headless WordPress Migration is the right fit—and what a first engagement looks like.
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