Web application and website development on Next.js, React and WordPress

Choose WordPress when the site is mainly content that a marketing team updates every week, and Next.js when you need custom interfaces, logged-in features or tight control over performance. WordPress brings a familiar editor and a large plugin ecosystem, but every plugin adds maintenance and security work. Next.js gives full control of markup and rendering, but editors need a CMS connected to it. We recommend one after discovery, based on who edits the site, what it must integrate with and who maintains it.

A website mainly presents information and drives enquiries, while a web application lets signed-in users do work: manage bookings, view data, submit requests or run reports. Web applications need authentication, permissions, a database and business logic on the server, which makes them more involved to design, test and secure. Many projects sit between the two, such as a marketing site with a client portal attached.

Yes. This setup is usually called headless WordPress: editors keep the WordPress admin, while a Next.js front end fetches content through the WordPress REST API and renders fast static or server-rendered pages. It suits sites that need custom interactions or stricter performance than a theme allows. The trade-offs are two systems to host, previews that need extra setup, and page-builder or form plugins that no longer control the front end. For a simple brochure site, a well-built theme is usually the better choice.

Web development cost depends mainly on the number of distinct page templates or screens, whether content and designs are ready, and how much happens behind a login. A WordPress site built from a defined set of templates is a far smaller job than a web application with user roles, payments and integrations. Extra languages, migration of existing content and accessibility testing also add effort. After discovery we give a fixed quote for the first release, plus expected hosting and licence costs.

Timelines depend most on scope and on how ready your content and decisions are. For websites, late copy and images are the most common cause of delay, so we agree a content plan at the start. A well-defined marketing site or a small first release of a web application is typically measured in weeks, while larger portals ship in phases. Preview links every one to two weeks let you reprioritise features as you see real screens.

It can, so a rebuild needs a planned migration rather than a straight swap. We crawl the current site and export its ranking pages from Search Console, then point each old URL to its new address with a permanent redirect. Page titles, internal links and structured data are carried across, and the new site is crawled on staging to catch broken links before launch. Afterwards we watch Search Console closely, because positions often move for a few weeks while search engines reprocess the site.

Yes. WordPress sites are editable from day one, and we set up page templates and reusable blocks so editors can build new pages without breaking the design. For Next.js builds we connect a content management back end with structured content types, previews and scheduled publishing. We also run a handover session and write short guides for the tasks your team performs most often.

We set performance budgets at the start and check them on every build. In practice that means server rendering or static generation where possible, optimised images and fonts, minimal client-side JavaScript, caching at the edge and efficient database queries behind the API. We measure Core Web Vitals on real mid-range phones and throttled connections, not only on a developer's laptop.

We treat WCAG 2.2 level AA as our working standard and check it during development rather than at the end. That means semantic HTML before ARIA, focus that moves correctly when dialogs open or routes change, form errors announced to screen readers, and custom widgets such as date pickers that work by keyboard alone. Automated checks run in the pipeline, and key journeys are tested manually with screen readers. For a formal audit, we work alongside your chosen auditor and fix what they find.

We design against the OWASP Top 10 risks from the first sprint. In practice that means server-side validation and parameterised queries, output encoding and a Content Security Policy against cross-site scripting, CSRF protection, secure HttpOnly session cookies and rate limits on login and contact forms. On WordPress we keep plugins few and vetted, require two-factor sign-in for administrators and apply updates promptly. Dependency scanning in the pipeline flags vulnerable packages before they are released.

We build the right-to-left version into the same codebase rather than as a separate site. Layouts use CSS logical properties so spacing and alignment flip automatically, icons that imply direction are mirrored, and Arabic or Urdu fonts are chosen for legibility at small sizes. Forms accept mixed English and Arabic input, and the CMS lets editors manage each language side by side. Each language gets its own URLs, so every version can be indexed in its own market.

Your organisation should, and we set projects up that way. The domain and DNS stay registered to you, hosting runs in your Vercel, AWS or other account, and the code lives in a repository you own. Administrator access to WordPress, analytics and Search Console is created under your company email, with our access added as separate users you can remove. We document the setup, so another developer could take over without needing anything from us.