happyrecept.ru — from WordPress
to Laravel 11 and React
Migrating a recipe website from WordPress to Laravel 11 and React: a new admin panel, faster response times and a clear structure instead of an unmaintained plugin sprawl.
Challenge
The client's site had been running on WordPress for years without maintenance. Over time this became noticeable: the site grew laggy and slow, with Lighthouse showing a Performance score around 60. The content structure was unclear, and navigating categories and recipes was inconvenient. There was no proper user registration, and — crucial for a recipe and article site — no convenient text editor at all.
Solution
We migrated the project to Laravel 11 (backend) and React via Inertia.js (frontend) — giving SPA-level interface speed without a separate API layer. Data lives in MySQL, and the whole environment runs in Docker for a consistent setup at every stage. We redesigned the structure from scratch: recipe categories and subcategories, flexible category assignment for articles, full user registration, a modern text editor and image uploads. Development took about a month — from the initial audit to launch in production.
Results
The old WordPress version scored around 60 on Lighthouse Performance — the new production build already responds in about 0.5 seconds (TTFB, measured on the live site)
New admin panel: convenient category and subcategory management, assigning articles to any category, a modern text editor and image uploads — the client described it as noticeably easier to use than WordPress
The site has been live for less than a week — it's too early to report SEO traffic and rankings data; we'll update the case once we have enough data
We migrate businesses from WordPress, Tilda and site builders to Laravel, Next.js and React — preserving SEO and without stopping sales during the move.
Let's talk about migrating your project
Describe your current site and what's not working — we'll estimate the scope of work, SEO risks and the timeline for moving to a new stack.