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McGinnPublishing
Accepting projects · Q4 2026 / Q1 2027

The CMS your editors already know. The front end your engineers want.

We take WordPress apart at the theme layer and hand you the part that works: an editorial system your team already uses, delivered as a typed content API behind a Next.js application. Editors publish without a deployment. Developers stop fighting a plugin.

Start a projectSee how it fits together
Delivery
Discovery to launch, 12–20 weeks
Team
Four to six, no account layer
Stack
WordPress · Next.js · Shopify
Support
Managed retainer or handover

request trace

GET/products/harrow-and-vine

ISR·revalidate 300·tags: catalogue, product:hv-2214

  • route match2ms
  • edge shell38ms
  • catalogue query41ms
  • availability12ms
Time to first byte93ms▌

p75 · field data, 28d

Read the case study
The decoupled approach

Headless WordPress with a Next.js frontend

Trusted by editorial and commerce teams at

Nine years · sixty platforms

Meridian PressHarrow & VineKestrel OutfittersOssian GalleryThe Albany EnsembleFenwick & DoyleRavensmoor TrustCopperfield EditionsSalt Lane RecordsWhitlock MuseumMeridian PressHarrow & VineKestrel OutfittersOssian GalleryThe Albany EnsembleFenwick & DoyleRavensmoor TrustCopperfield EditionsSalt Lane RecordsWhitlock Museum

60+

Headless platforms shipped

Publishers, museums, retailers and one very stubborn bookseller.

1.1s

Median p75 Largest Contentful Paint

Across every site we operate in production, measured in the field.

41%

Median uplift in checkout conversion

Measured against the pre-migration build, twelve weeks post-launch.

9 yrs

Building for WordPress

Since 2016. Long enough to have opinions about plugin hygiene.

02The architecture

WordPress keeps the editing. Next.js keeps everything else.

We take WordPress apart at the theme layer. The origin never renders a page, plugins never touch the front end, and publishing requires zero redeployment.

See full architecture & ADRs
01Source of truth

Authoring layer

WordPress stays WordPress

Your team keeps the Gutenberg block editor, media library, editorial revisions, and user roles they already know. Nothing to retrain.

  • Block Editor
  • ACF Pro
  • WP 6.7
02Never renders a page

Delivery layer

Curated, typed APIs

A locked WPGraphQL and REST layer exposes only what the frontend needs. Content is cached at the edge with on-demand tag revalidation on publish.

  • WPGraphQL
  • Edge ISR
  • Tag Webhooks
03Field-measured LCP < 1.5s

Experience layer

Next.js App Router

React Server Components render HTML on edge CDN nodes. Interactive islands hydrate only where user actions require it.

  • Next.js 15
  • React 19
  • Server Components

Includes cache invalidation webhooks, public schema locks, and Shopify cart integration.

Read the technical comparison table & process
03Services

Seven ways to get unstuck.

We are a delivery studio, not a consultancy that sells a roadmap. Most engagements combine two or three of these.

Scopes & engagement models

  • What you get

    The install stays WordPress. Editors keep the block editor, the media library and the revision history they rely on. What we remove is the theme layer: no page-builder markup, no front-end coupling, no PHP template that has to grow a new layout every time marketing needs a change. Content is delivered as typed GraphQL, cached at the edge, and rendered by a Next.js application you own end to end.

    • Content model: custom post types, taxonomies and field groups
    • WPGraphQL schema with restricted public queries
    • Next.js App Router frontend with ISR + on-demand revalidation
    • Editorial preview that renders the real production components
    • Media pipeline routed through next/image against WP uploads
    • Role and capability design for editorial, commerce and marketing teams

    What changes

    • Editors ship pages without an engineering ticket
    • Front-end releases decouple from content releases
    • Cumulative Layout Shift held near zero across long-form pages

04Selected work

Platforms, not mockups.

All case studies

Meridian Press

Independent academic publishing

2025

A 40,000-title catalogue that loads like a single page

Eleven years of accumulated WordPress debt, a print catalogue that had outgrown its template, and an editorial team of 200 who could not ship a landing page without a developer.

p75 Largest Contentful Paint
0.6sp75 Largest Contentful Paintwas 4.8s
Engaged time on feature pages
+68%Engaged time on feature pages
Editors shipping without a ticket
200Editors shipping without a ticket
Titles migrated, zero downtime
40kTitles migrated, zero downtime
WordPressWPGraphQLNext.jsVercelAlgoliaRead case study

Also documented: Meridian Press (digital publishing), Kestrel Outfitters (Shopify commerce), and Ossian Gallery (archives).

View all 4 case studies
07In their words

The people who signed it off.

“We had been told headless would cost us the editorial team. Six months in, our commissioning editors ship features on the same day they finish them, and the homepage is the fastest page on our network. I have stopped trying to explain how that works.”

Ruth Alderton

Digital Director, Meridian Press

+68% engaged time on feature pages

“The migration was the part I was dreading. Eleven thousand titles, a URL structure built in 2009, and not one day of downtime. The redirect report alone was worth the fee.”

Ivo Brennan

Head of Commerce, Harrow & Vine

“What we got was not a website. It was a content platform with a shop attached, and a team that documented every decision they made so we could argue with it. We have extended it twice without needing them.”

Sofia Marchetti

CTO, Kestrel Outfitters

“McGinn are unusually honest about what headless will not fix. The first thing they told us was that we did not need to replatform our ticketing system. That one conversation paid for the discovery phase.”

Daniel Okonkwo

Director of Technology, The Albany Ensemble