In short:
- No loss of rankings – existing URLs stay in place, everything else is permanently redirected (301).
- No days-long downtime – the actual switch-over moment takes under five minutes.
- A lean custom solution instead of plugin sprawl – only the code your project truly needs is running.

Why WordPress and TYPO3 eventually get in the way

A security hole in some plugin, and you have to update right away – at the risk of it dragging another extension down with it. That is usually how it starts. You probably know the patterns:

  • Forced updates under pressure. A hole in one plugin forces an immediate update – and that can take another extension down with it.
  • A growing attack surface. Widely used systems get probed automatically for known vulnerabilities. The more third-party code, the more doors.
  • Third-party dependency. When a plugin is no longer maintained, you are left with a hole in the system that you cannot close yourself.
  • Performance you have to buy your way out of. Because the base system is slow, caching plugins get piled on top, then pricier hosting, then a CDN – fighting the symptoms instead of the cause.

Both systems have their place – WordPress gets you online fast, TYPO3 carries large editorial teams – but the problem does not start on day one, it starts when your project grows. Every plugin, every extension and every theme brings its own code, its own database tables and its own vulnerabilities. After a year or two, a typical installation consists of more than half foreign code that no one in-house has ever read.

A custom solution flips that ratio: only the code your project truly needs is running. No dead weight, no doors you never opened. This is not an end in itself – it makes the site faster, safer and maintainable.

What a custom solution really replaces

A custom solution does not mean "everything from scratch and expensive forever". It means: we move your content and workflows into a lean system tailored exactly to your project. Editors get an interface for maintaining content, without the building-block sprawl behind them.

The difference is under the hood. Instead of a system that wants to do everything for everyone, you get exactly the logic that reflects your business – and an infrastructure built for it.

We don't migrate in theory – proven on our own portal

The most important reason to trust us with a migration: we run a large, heavily used portal ourselves – and we moved it completely. In production, with real users, real search-engine traffic and real revenue in the background. What that proves, in four numbers:

  • Cutover in under five minutes, not a single record lost. We copied the large volume of data calmly in advance and, at the switch-over moment, only pulled in the last changes – no "maintenance page for two days".
  • Around 180 database queries per second in continuous operation – over 850 million within a measurement window of a few weeks, nearly all served straight from cache.
  • Geographic radius search brought from 725 down to 44 milliseconds – a factor of 16.
  • Stayed stable under bot attack. When disguised automated browsers temporarily made up almost 40 percent of the traffic, response time rose to several seconds. After filtering out the bogus requests, the site was back in around a tenth of a second.

Behind this stands our own server cluster with database replication across several nodes and a multi-layer cache tier. If one node fails, another takes over – secured by a real restart test, not assumed. The entire infrastructure sits in Germany and is GDPR-compliant.

The point is not the tech show. The point is: the failure patterns that come up during a migration, we have seen and solved on our own system – not for the first time on yours.

Important for context: this is our own portal migration as proof of competence, not an anonymized customer reference. What carries over to your project is the method and the demonstrated ability – not a promised outcome we could not measure.

How a clean migration works

A migration almost never fails at the technical act of switching over. It fails because someone missed something – an old URL, a redirect, a form that is only needed one day a month. That is why we work in clear steps.

1. Inventory

First we fully record the existing system: all URLs, all content types, all forms, all redirects, all interfaces to third-party systems. Plus the current rankings and the most important entry pages from the Search Console. The result is a list on which, in the end, every item gets a check mark. Whatever is missing here falls through the cracks in the move – which is why this step gets the most care.

2. Rebuild instead of blindly copying

We take over the content, but not the ballast. Plugin sprawl, dead extensions and duplicate features stay behind. Text, images and structures move cleanly into the new system. Crucial for search engines: the URLs stay identical wherever possible. Where an address has to change, we set up a permanent redirect (301). That way you lose neither inbound links nor the ranking value you have built up.

3. Dress rehearsal

Before anything goes live, the new environment runs fully in parallel. We play the move through once, completely: we reconcile content, we test redirects address by address, we run forms and workflows for real. Only once the dress rehearsal is clean do we schedule the actual cutover.

4. The cutover

Before the move, we lower the time-to-live of the DNS records (TTL), so the switch takes effect everywhere within minutes rather than hours. Right before the cutover, we pull in the last changes from the old system, then we switch over. On our own portal, that exact moment took under five minutes. Afterwards we watch – error logs, redirects, Search Console – and catch small things before they become a problem.

SEO is part of the mandatory work, not a bonus

The most common damage in a system change is not the few minutes of downtime. It is the loss of rankings that surfaces three weeks later because redirects were missing or URLs changed silently. That is why, for us, preserving rankings is not an add-on but part of the migration plan from the very first hour.

Concretely, that means: keep existing URLs, otherwise redirect cleanly; carry over structured data, meta information and sitemaps; after the move, actively prompt indexing and check coverage in the Search Console. That we can not only manage SEO but build it is shown by our own track record: on one of our projects, visibility rose by around 800 percent over twelve months. New, fast and clean technology is not a side effect here but one of the foundations for such results.

When the switch pays off – and when it doesn't

Not every project needs a custom solution. A small, stable site with a handful of plugins that run cleanly does not need to be touched.

The switch pays off when you recognize yourself in one of these points:

  • Your site is getting noticeably slower, and caching plugins only shift the problem.
  • Updates have become a risk, because you never know what breaks afterwards.
  • You are paying for features and hosting upgrades that really just cover up symptoms.
  • Your business depends on workflows that the building-block system only maps with crutches.
  • Security and GDPR matter too much to you to leave them to a chain of foreign plugins.

If none of that applies, we will tell you so. If several apply, the move gets you back speed, security and control – and you stop chasing after the next update.

Frequently asked questions

Will I lose my Google rankings in the move?

Not if the migration is done cleanly. Existing URLs stay in place or are permanently redirected, structured data and sitemaps move along, and indexing is actively prompted and checked after the cutover. Loss of rankings comes from forgotten redirects – exactly what the inventory step rules out.

How long is my site offline?

The actual switch-over moment takes minutes, not days. In our own portal migration, the cutover took under five minutes, because the bulk of the data is copied calmly beforehand and, at the cut, only the last changes still need to follow.

Can I keep my content?

Yes. Text, images and structures are carried over. What stays behind is the ballast – dead plugins, duplicate features, foreign code with no use.

How do you make sure no data is lost?

Through the sequence: transfer the base data completely first, then run a dress rehearsal, and at cutover pull in only the fresh changes. That way we reconcile beforehand and only switch over once everything is verifiably complete.

Where are the servers located?

In Germany, on our own infrastructure, GDPR-compliant. Not an anonymous resource pool at a mass hoster, but a cluster we run ourselves and whose failover we have tested.

Do I have to switch everything at once?

No. You can migrate technology and content in stages. What makes sense in your case we clarify at the start – based on your inventory, not by a one-size-fits-all template.