Consulting Staff

Challenge

CONSULTING STAFF CFEN SRL is a firm specialized in EU funds consultancy for small and medium businesses in Romania. The existing site was WordPress with 7+ years of evolution, but with accumulated issues: old theme with legacy plugins, compromisable security, poor mobile performance (LCP over 5 seconds), fragmented URL structure after 3 partial redesigns. Plus a business requirement: site integration with internal client project tracking system (from lead to file submission to funding approval to implementation) operated through a custom EspoCRM. Next.js migration had to be done without losing SEO on positions won on competitive terms (EU fund consultancy, non-refundable financing, PNRR).

Solution

Gradual migration with zero-downtime and SEO preservation. Stack chosen: Next.js 16 with Prisma 7 + PostgreSQL for backend, NextAuth 4 for consultant authentication, Tailwind 4 for UI. Minimal custom CMS for content team (articles, offers, client case studies). Original WordPress kept in parallel as living archive until final cutover, with MariaDB DB for retroactive lookup. All old URLs mapped in 301 redirects to new structure (simplified: /services/, /financing/, /resources/, /contact). New site is SSG for static pages (homepage, about, services) and SSR for dynamic pages (with CMS content), combination giving excellent performance (Lighthouse 95+) plus easy content management. EspoCRM integration through REST API for lead synchronization (site form → CRM automatically), with webhook on project status changes for client portal content update.

Process

1. 01Complete WordPress site audit: pages, URLs, rankings, performance
2. 02Next.js project setup with adapted Prisma schema
3. 03Boilerplate development with 4-5 layout patterns covering all pages
4. 04Content migration (articles, pages, offers) preserving semantic structure
5. 05301 redirects mapping for all old URLs
6. 06EspoCRM integration through REST API + webhooks
7. 07Gradual launch with maintenance page and whitelist for testing
8. 0830-day post-launch SEO monitoring with quick fixes where regressions appear