Where the project started
A multi-year-old marketing site running on an aging WordPress build had quietly become the slowest-loading asset in the business. Plugins had accreted across editors, the admin felt sluggish, and Core Web Vitals were failing on every key landing page.
Editorial workflow was the leading indicator - writers had stopped publishing because saving a draft took fifteen seconds.
What we changed
We rebuilt the theme on a modern stack, consolidated the plugin surface from thirty-plus down to a curated set, and reworked the content model around the templates editors actually used.
Performance work focused on the assets users actually load: hero imagery, web fonts, and the third-party scripts that had compounded over the years. We mapped 301s for every URL change before cutover.
What changed for the business
Time-to-publish dropped from minutes to seconds. Page weight fell by more than half. Organic traffic recovered within ninety days as Core Web Vitals turned green and crawl budget improved.
More importantly, the editorial team started shipping again - the platform stopped being a tax on their work.