WordPress sites grow like houses that have been lived in for years: every need brings a plugin, every plugin leaves behind files, tables and weight. At some point the site doesn’t load - it crawls.

yachtsgreece.com, a yacht charter site with a catalogue of 600+ boats, had reached exactly that point: more than 40 plugins, a total footprint exceeding 35 GB, and hosting on a server in the United States - half a planet away from its visitors, who are mostly in Europe.

The challenge

The easy answer to such an overloaded site would be “let’s build a new one”. Except that here the valuable content was enormous: 600+ boats, each with its details and photos. Moving them by hand would take weeks of work and be full of errors.

So three things had to happen at once: a new, lightweight site; a reliable, automated migration of all the data; and a move to hosting close to the visitors.

The solution

  • A disciplined rebuild. The new WordPress was built with a modern design and just 9 plugins - only what is genuinely needed. Every plugin left out is weight that will never load again.
  • Data migration via Python. I wrote a program that read the 600+ boats directly from the old server’s MySQL and wrote them into the new one’s MySQL, while the photos were copied over electronically in full. No manual data entry, not a single boat lost.
  • A move to Europe. The site left the American server and is now hosted on my own server in Europe - closer to its visitors and to its data.

The result

The same site, with all of its content, now fits in 7 GB instead of 35+ - five times smaller. It runs on 9 plugins instead of 40+, with a modern design, from a European server. A site that used to crawl now flies - without losing a single one of the 600+ boats in the catalogue.

Why it matters

Rebuilding a site does not mean starting from zero. With an automated migration, the content you have built over years moves intact into its new home - and the new home can be dramatically lighter than the old one.

If your own WordPress has become overloaded or is hosted far from its audience, let’s see what can be done. See more about my web development and rebuild services or send me a message through the contact form.