Updating a corporate WordPress site and completing 100+ changes

Nearly ten years of changes on one platform

The company's corporate website had been built on WordPress almost ten years earlier. As its design and positioning changed, so did the site. Multiple language versions were introduced along the way, and I helped implement them.

The company later put me in charge of all work on the site. Making changes and granting access needed to be easier. The site ran on a virtual machine, and ongoing development needed a structured build and deployment workflow.

The client also supplied a list of more than 100 layout, design and SEO tasks.

Why I kept the existing site

Behind the visual and SEO requests was a deeper problem. WordPress had not been updated for a long time, and PHP, the database engine and libraries were also outdated. Updating the platform was outside the original brief, as were several other tasks I eventually completed beyond the initial list.

At first, rebuilding seemed simpler. But after reviewing several hundred pages and their language versions, I concluded that improving the existing site made more sense. I retained its foundation and updated WordPress, PHP, the database engine and libraries rather than limiting the work to layout changes.

Completing 100+ tasks across hundreds of pages

Some requirements needed clarification, and others contradicted one another. I discussed these issues with the client before implementing changes.

The site had many small defects. Manually checking several hundred pages would have taken too much of the time available. I used AI agents to help find and fix issues. Tests I had written beforehand automatically checked those changes through several iterations.

Loading speed was a separate area of work. Pages were slow, and Google PageSpeed scores were low. I used those metrics to guide performance optimization.

Testing changes and documenting releases

I completed the client's entire list and the additional tasks identified during the review. I updated the platform, added tests, and deployed the site to test and production environments. This made it possible to check changes before publishing them to the live site.

For ongoing development, I established and documented the CI/CD workflow. The instructions explain which parts of the site come from the repository, which must be obtained separately, how to run the build, and the order in which to update WordPress, plugins and the runtime environment. The work addressed both the accumulated problems and the process for future updates.

An outdated site and a growing task list do not necessarily call for a rebuild. First, assess whether updating the platform and improving the existing site can meet the need. I discuss this approach in my article on legacy system modernization. For more about the work I take on, see complex websites and improvements to existing sites.