Platform & Technology
What the new site is built on, and why we chose it
Why a new platform
The current site runs on WordPress, and it has served MOWP well for years. The new site is built on a different foundation (Payload CMS and Next.js), and that's a deliberate choice, not a trendy one:
- Fewer moving parts. The current site leans on a collection of plugins for forms, sliders, popups, and stored submissions. Each one needs updates, and each is a separate thing that can break. On the new site, those are features of a single codebase we maintain directly.
- A better editing experience. Structured content, live preview, and no plugin stack to babysit. How the CMS Works covers this from the editor's side.
- Fast and hard to break. Pages are pre-rendered and served through a CDN, which is why the site stays quick under traffic spikes. The public site exposes far less to attackers than a traditional CMS, where the admin and the site share one door.
- SEO in the foundation, not in plugins. Metadata, structured data, sitemaps, redirects, and the performance that drives Core Web Vitals are all part of the framework itself. Nothing depends on a third-party SEO plugin staying updated.
- No lock-in. The entire stack is open source with no license fees, and content lives in a standard database that can be exported. If MOWP ever outgrows this setup, the content comes along.
The tools
You don't need to understand any of these to use the CMS, but they're here for reference. Payload is the only one you'll actually interact with.
| Tool | What it does | Learn more |
|---|---|---|
| Payload CMS | The content management system where you'll edit pages and manage content | Docs |
| Next.js | The framework the site is built on. It handles routing, rendering, and performance | Docs |
| React | The UI library that powers the site's components and interactivity | Docs |
| Tailwind CSS | The styling system, a utility-first approach to CSS | Docs |
| TypeScript | The programming language. It adds type safety to JavaScript | Docs |
| shadcn/ui | Pre-built accessible UI components (buttons, forms, dialogs, etc.) | Components |
These aren't exotic choices
Everything here is mainstream, actively maintained technology. React is maintained by Meta and is among the most widely used UI libraries on the web; Next.js, maintained by Vercel, is the most established framework built on it. Payload and the rest are open source with large, active communities. None of this is a niche bet: any capable web team can pick up this codebase, and the skills to work on it are common in the industry.
For what keeps the site running behind the scenes (hosting, monitoring, backups), see Infrastructure & hosting.