We finished migrating f1service.com.ua from WordPress to our own StartOnline CMS. The same engine powers the site you're reading now — it now serves client projects through a theme system.
Why migrate
The original WordPress site did the job, but familiar problems piled up:
- Slow page loads due to the plugin stack
- Ongoing security concerns — WordPress and plugins need constant updates
- Hard to add non-standard logic (repair request forms with DB logging, status lookups)
- A not-very-obvious admin for the client — editing services through Gutenberg and ACF was clunky
What we did
Migrated to a Laravel 13 + Filament 5 stack as a standalone theme within StartOnline CMS:
- Custom theme
themes/f1servicein the CMS repo — fully isolated from core - All views and routes live inside the theme, core updates ship independently
- Multilingual (UK/EN) via spatie/laravel-translatable
- Filament admin in Ukrainian for the content editor
- Response caching — pages served in ~5–15 ms
- Sitemap, redirects from old URLs, hreflang — no search ranking drop
- Clean 301 migration from WordPress paths
Outcome
- Site loads noticeably faster — fewer requests, no heavy plugins
- Security is handled by Laravel and our support, not a pile of third-party code
- Request forms land in the database and are visible in the admin
- The client edits services and content themselves, no commits from us needed
What's next
We plan to hook the site up to a full CRM for intake, SMS/Viber notifications, and PDF receipts. Those already exist in our SC CRM product — integration is in progress.
If you also have an aging WordPress site and you're tired of plugins — get in touch.