---
schema: 4
type: case
id: 9
title: "Cutting a WordPress site from 59 stylesheets to 1"
description: "A performance audit and clean-up for a design and fabrication company’s marketing site, with a migration plan to Next.js on Vercel."
created: 2026-10-20
updated: 2026-10-20
attributes:
  channels: [website]
  status: published
  motif: web
  kind: client
  client: "A design and fabrication company"
  year: 2026
  state: "Delivered"
  stack: ["WordPress", "Elementor", "LiteSpeed Cache", "Next.js", "Vercel"]
  timeline: "May 2026"
---

## Problem

The site ran on 31 plugins, loaded 59 CSS files and made 142 requests on the home page, and its design was locked inside the page builder.

## What we built

- A baseline audit: Lighthouse, real-user Core Web Vitals, a breakdown of the largest paint and the cache settings
- A plugin inventory with a cut list, and staged changes with a before and after change log
- A migration plan from WordPress to Vercel: redirects, search basics, contact form, DNS cut-over and a rollback snapshot
- A reference set of screenshots for every route

## Outcome

- On staging, CSS files went from 59 to 1 and requests from 142 to 72
- On staging, lab largest contentful paint went from 500 ms to 248 ms
- Lazy loading cut home-page image requests from 25 to 6