Project Overview
AL.com.mk is a leading Macedonian news and media portal that had been running on WordPress for years. As their audience grew and digital expectations evolved, the platform began showing its age — slow load times, poor Core Web Vitals scores, and a rigid CMS that couldn't keep up with the demands of a modern news operation.
Blend Designs was engaged to completely rebuild the platform using Next.js 14, delivering a blazing-fast, SEO-optimised news portal that dramatically improved both user experience and search engine performance.
The Challenge
The existing WordPress site faced several critical issues:
- Performance: Page load times averaging 6–8 seconds on mobile, causing high bounce rates
- Core Web Vitals: Failing LCP, CLS, and FID scores — directly impacting Google rankings
- Scalability: Plugin conflicts and database bottlenecks during traffic spikes from breaking news
- SEO limitations: WordPress's server-side rendering model couldn't leverage modern SEO techniques like dynamic metadata, structured data, or ISR
- Mobile experience: The responsive theme was clunky and not optimised for the mobile-first audience
- Security: Constant plugin vulnerabilities and WordPress-specific attack vectors
Our Solution: WordPress → Next.js Migration
We architected a complete platform rebuild using the modern Next.js App Router, replacing every layer of the WordPress stack with purpose-built, high-performance alternatives.
Technology Stack
- Framework: Next.js 14 with App Router and React Server Components
- Language: TypeScript for type safety across the entire codebase
- Styling: Tailwind CSS for utility-first, consistent design
- Database: Supabase (PostgreSQL) replacing WordPress's MySQL
- CMS: Custom headless admin panel replacing wp-admin
- Hosting: Vercel Edge Network for global CDN delivery
- Images: Next.js Image Optimisation with WebP/AVIF conversion
- Search: Full-text search powered by Supabase's built-in capabilities
Key Features Delivered
- Incremental Static Regeneration (ISR): Articles are statically generated and revalidated on publish, giving static-site speed with dynamic content freshness
- Dynamic OG Images: Auto-generated social sharing images for every article
- Category & Tag Architecture: Hierarchical content organisation with SEO-optimised category pages
- Breaking News Banner: Real-time breaking news alerts without page reload
- Related Articles Engine: AI-assisted content recommendations to increase time-on-site
- Structured Data: NewsArticle, BreadcrumbList, and Organisation schema markup on every page
- RSS Feeds: Auto-generated RSS/Atom feeds for syndication
- Sitemap: Dynamic XML sitemap with news sitemap for Google News indexing
- Dark Mode: System-aware dark/light mode with smooth transitions
- Progressive Web App: Installable PWA with offline reading capability
Migration Process
The migration was executed in phases to ensure zero downtime and no content loss:
- Content Audit: Catalogued 10,000+ articles, categories, tags, authors, and media assets
- Data Migration: Custom migration scripts to transfer all WordPress content to Supabase, preserving slugs, publish dates, and metadata
- URL Preservation: All existing WordPress URLs maintained via Next.js routing — zero 404s, zero lost SEO equity
- Image Migration: All media assets migrated to Supabase Storage with automatic WebP optimisation
- Redirect Mapping: Comprehensive redirect rules for any URL structure changes
- Parallel Testing: New site ran in parallel for 2 weeks before cutover
- DNS Cutover: Seamless traffic switch with instant rollback capability
Results
The results after launch exceeded all targets:
- 🚀 Page load time: Reduced from 6.8s to 0.9s (87% improvement)
- 📊 Core Web Vitals: All metrics now in the "Good" range (green)
- 🔍 Google Search impressions: +340% within 90 days of launch
- 📱 Mobile bounce rate: Reduced by 52%
- ⏱️ Time on site: Increased by 38%
- 🔒 Security incidents: Zero since launch (vs. monthly WordPress attacks)
- 💰 Hosting costs: Reduced by 60% (Vercel vs. managed WordPress hosting)
Why Next.js Over WordPress?
For a high-traffic news portal, Next.js offers fundamental advantages that WordPress simply cannot match:
- Performance by default: Static generation means pages are served from CDN edge nodes, not a PHP server
- Developer experience: TypeScript, hot reload, and modern tooling make feature development 3× faster
- SEO control: Full control over metadata, structured data, and rendering strategy per page type
- No plugin hell: Every feature is purpose-built — no compatibility issues, no security vulnerabilities from third-party plugins
- Infinite scalability: Vercel's edge network handles traffic spikes automatically with no server management
