10. Appendix

Tool alternatives

Capability	Primary recommendation	Common alternatives
Frontend	Next.js	Astro, Remix, SvelteKit
CMS	Payload	Sanity, Contentful, Strapi
Database	Neon Postgres	Supabase, RDS, PlanetScale
Media	Backblaze B2	S3, Cloudflare R2
Email	Brevo	Resend, Postmark, SendGrid
Search	DB native first	Meilisearch, Algolia

Cost breakdown model

Estimate monthly cost by bucket:

• Frontend hosting and edge bandwidth
• CMS hosting and database
• Media storage and egress
• Email sends and API usage
• Monitoring and alerting tools

Track both steady-state cost and migration-period overlap cost.

Security model comparison

WordPress-heavy model

• Security posture depends on plugin chain quality
• Larger update blast radius in shared runtime
• Frequent emergency patch cadence

Modern decomposed model

• Smaller component-level blast radius
• Explicit service-level access controls
• Easier targeted patching and incident containment

Example migration scripts

Slug normalization

export const normalizeSlug = (value: string) =>
  value
    .toLowerCase()
    .trim()
    .replace(/[^a-z0-9\s-]/g, "")
    .replace(/\s+/g, "-")
    .replace(/-+/g, "-");

Shortcode strip pass

This is a deliberately naive first pass. It can remove text that is not a shortcode, and it will not handle nested or complex shortcode patterns correctly. Use it only as a temporary cleanup step, and expect manual review.

export const stripShortcodes = (html: string) =>
  html.replace(/\[[^\]]+\]/g, "");

Common pitfalls

• Underestimating data cleanup effort
• Migrating plugin behavior without business validation
• Launching with incomplete redirect coverage
• Ignoring editor training for the new content model
• Treating migration as a one-time event instead of a new operating model