This site is its own rebuild project, and it's still going. Here's what we changed, what we've learned so far and what we don't know yet. I'll update this page with real results as they come in, rather than promise a before and after that doesn't exist.
Where we started
The old site ran on Symfony with a theme that had aged badly and years of mixed content. Dropshipping, WordPress tips, visas and AI all sat side by side. Google couldn't tell what the site was about. Over the 90 days to 4 September 2026, Search Console showed 1,167 impressions and zero clicks. That was the honest starting point.
The technical rebuild
We started moving to Next.js in February 2026, with the App Router, TypeScript and Tailwind. The most useful decision was to leave the existing MySQL database as the source of truth. Prisma sits on top of the legacy tables, so nothing had to be migrated in one risky step, and old pages could move across one route at a time.
We also rebuilt how we ship. A deploy now builds in a temporary directory, swaps it in atomically, checks the home page and blog on the new build, and restores the previous version if either fails. It's dull work, and it means we can ship small changes all the time without fear.
The content rebuild
The bigger problem was never the code. We cut the site's focus down to six problems nomads actually have: finding a place, tools, gaming, laptops, photography and rebuilding a site. Each has a long guide, supported by shorter articles that link back to it.
What's gone wrong
- We published a lot of content quickly, and some of it reads like a template. We're rewriting it.
- Old off-topic posts still hold a large share of our views, and they still blur what the site is about.
- We promised tests we hadn't documented. We've taken those claims down.
What we've learned so far
- Redirect discipline matters more than the choice of framework.
- Keeping the old database saved months of migration risk.
- A fast site with an unfocused topic still gets nowhere.
- Safe, boring deploys are what make frequent improvement possible.
What we still don't know
We don't yet know whether the new structure will bring lasting search traffic. Rankings for new content take months, so any number we gave you today would be noise. When we have enough data, it'll go on this page, good or bad.
To run the same process on your own site, use the 7-step framework, and read what a rebuild costs before you commit.