From WordPress to Astro: how dezaak.nl made the move

In October 2026, two critical holes were found in PHP, the software underneath every WordPress site. Anyone running WordPress had to update that same day. And again the month after, for the plugins.

At De Zaak we no longer had that worry. A month earlier, on 15 September 2026, I moved dezaak.nl from WordPress to Astro. It is a site with 1.5 million visitors a year and 4,705 articles. Below is how that went, including what went wrong. A smaller site goes the same way, only faster.

What changes

With WordPress, a page is put together again on every visit. The server runs PHP, pulls the text from a database and lets the plugins do their work. Each of those parts can have a security hole, and each needs to stay updated.

With Astro, every page is built once. After that it sits ready on a global network and every visitor gets it straight away. There is no PHP running, and no database or login page for anyone to attack.

WordPress

1. Visitor
2. Server running PHP
3. Database
4. Plugins
5. Page

Rebuilt on every visit. Every part needs to stay updated.

Astro

1. Visitor
2. Page, ready

Built once, then served straight from a global network. No PHP, no database, no login page.

To your visitors the site looks the same. The difference is under the bonnet: fewer parts, so less that can break, and less to keep up with.

The move in four steps

1. 01Week 1Inventory

   Every page, image, PDF and link on a list.

   At dezaak.nl: 4,705 articles, plus pages, images and PDFs.

2. 02Week 1-2Build

   The same content as ready-made pages, in your own style.

   At dezaak.nl: Every WordPress article as a static page.

3. 03Week 3Test

   Every old link, every form and the speed checked.

   At dezaak.nl: This is where we missed the old PDFs and images. Fixed within two days.

4. 04Week 3Live

   Domain switched, WordPress off.

   At dezaak.nl: Live on 15 September 2026.

Timeline for a site up to 25 pages. dezaak.nl is larger and took longer.

1. Inventory

First everything goes on a list: every page, every image, every PDF and every link pointing somewhere. Including what you have forgotten yourself, such as an old campaign page that ads still point to.

At dezaak.nl that was 4,705 articles, plus separate pages, images and PDFs. That list is the basis for everything that follows. What is not on the list does not get tested.

2. Build

The same content goes onto the new site, in your own style. Every page becomes a ready-made file. Forms work without a plugin and messages land in your inbox as before.

I also add what Google and AI assistants need to read your site properly: structured data on every page, a sitemap and an llms.txt.

3. Test

Every old link has to go somewhere. Where possible the address stays the same. Where it changes, a redirect sends visitors and Google to the right page.

This is where it went wrong for us. On the second day after the move, 9% of visits ended up on an error page. The cause: old PDFs and images. WordPress kept them in a separate folder, and I had not redirected that folder. It came to 218 PDFs and more than 10,000 images. Within two days every one of those addresses had a redirect.

Since then I test not only the pages, but also the files those pages link to. And if anything is still missing on your site, I fix it free of charge.

4. Live

Your domain switches to the new site and WordPress goes off. I submit the new sitemap to Google Search Console and measure the speed again, so you have the difference in black and white. For a site of up to 25 pages the whole process usually takes three weeks.

What it delivered

100Speed, desktop

96Speed, mobile

100SEO

0.4 suntil the largest content is visible (desktop)

Google Lighthouse 12.8, article page, 21 October 2026. Lab measurement; real-visitor numbers vary.

A score of 100 is not a goal in itself. But Google does count speed when ranking search results, and on mobile, visitors drop off faster the longer a page takes to load.

The biggest difference we notice is in maintenance. No more plugins to update, no security patches to wait for and no updates that quietly break a form.

Editing your text

A common question: can I still change things myself? Yes. You tell your AI assistant, Claude for example, what needs to change. You get a preview link of the new version. Only once you approve does it go live. Email works too.

Who this is not for

A web shop is outside the scope of this move. So is a site where customers log in. Those run more on the server than just pages. If you have more than 25 pages, you get a fixed price up front.

What it costs

The move costs EUR 2,450 fixed for a site of up to 25 pages, until 30 November 2026. After that it is EUR 3,450. You only pay once the new site is live. Hosting and support then cost EUR 195 a month, cancel monthly. Business prices, excluding VAT.

Want to know where your site stands? Check your website for free. Within a minute you see how fast and how vulnerable it is, and what the move would deliver.