Migrating WordPress to Astro: A Case Study with 6× Speedup

Why migrate?#

WordPress is fine, but:

• Slow performance — average LCP 3-6s vs Astro’s 1-2s
• Expensive hosting — needs PHP + MySQL + a cache layer; Astro is static (free on Cloudflare Pages)
• Heavy maintenance — PHP, plugin, and security updates weekly
• Bloat — every plugin injects JS, often unused

Step-by-step migration#

1. Export content from WordPress#

Use WP All Export or the REST API:

curl https://oldsite.com/wp-json/wp/v2/posts?per_page=100&page=1 > posts.json

Loop pages until done.

2. Convert to Markdown#

Tools: wordpress-export-to-markdown (npm). Or a small Node script:

import TurndownService from 'turndown';
const td = new TurndownService();
const md = td.turndown(post.content.rendered);
fs.writeFileSync(`src/content/blog/${post.slug}.md`,
  `---
title: "${post.title.rendered}"
date: ${post.date}
slug: ${post.slug}
---

${md}`);

3. Set up an Astro content collection#

// src/content.config.ts
import { defineCollection, z } from "astro:content";
import { glob } from "astro/loaders";

export const collections = {
  blog: defineCollection({
    loader: glob({ pattern: "**/*.md", base: "./src/content/blog" }),
    schema: z.object({
      title: z.string(),
      date: z.coerce.date(),
      slug: z.string(),
    }),
  }),
};

4. Download & re-host images#

WP stores images in /wp-content/uploads/. Download them to public/images/ and update markdown paths.

Tip: serve as AVIF/WebP instead of original JPG/PNG. Sharp + Astro <Image> handle this automatically at build.

5. Redirects from the old URLs#

Astro permalinks may differ from WP. Create a _redirects file (Cloudflare/Netlify):

/2024/06/old-post-slug   /blog/old-post-slug   301
/category/foo            /blog/tag/foo         301
/wp-admin/*              /                     302

Or in nginx/Caddy:

redir /2024/* /blog{path} permanent

6. Preserve SEO#

Migrate:

• Meta title & description per post
• OG image (or generate fresh from a template)
• Canonical URL pointing at the new domain
• Sitemap — Astro auto-generates
• Structured data (Article schema)
• Hreflang if multi-language

7. Submit changes to Google#

1. Google Search Console → Add new property
2. Submit sitemap: https://newsite.com/sitemap.xml
3. URL Inspection for the top 10 URLs — request indexing
4. Monitor the “Coverage” report for 2-4 weeks

Real-project results#

A retail client: WordPress blog, 280 posts, 50K/month traffic.

Metric	WordPress	Astro
LCP (mobile 4G)	4.8s	0.9s
Lighthouse score	42	98
Build time	n/a	18s
Hosting cost	$40/month	$0 (Cloudflare Pages)
Maintenance hrs/month	~6	~0.5

Organic traffic usually improves after a migration thanks to a stronger SEO and performance foundation.

Common pitfalls#

1. Missing redirects — rankings drop instantly when URLs change without 301s.
2. Broken image paths — WP relative paths differ from Astro’s.
3. Form submissions — WP has Contact Form 7; Astro static needs external (Formspree, Netlify Forms) or your own backend.
4. Comment systems — Disqus as a drop-in, or Giscus for dev blogs.
5. WP shortcodes — Markdown has no equivalent; convert manually or write custom MDX components.

WordPress migration consult — we’ve migrated 30+ WP sites to Astro/Next.js.