How Better Hosting Made Website Improvements Possible
One of the first practical steps in the Website Overhaul was moving Angel City Chorale's website from a free legacy server in the Philippines to WP Engine.
The previous hosting environment carried real operational risk. We experienced repeated reliability issues, slow administrative workflows, plugin constraints, support delays, SSL problems, and outages that affected critical public pages. Rather than improving the website itself, we often found ourselves working around the limitations of the hosting platform.
Because of those challenges, migrating the website became the project's highest technical priority. We worked with RightSize to create a complete backup of the existing website before moving it to the managed WordPress hosting provider, WP Engine.
Measured from the migration report.
These metrics compare common WordPress admin workflows before and after the hosting migration.
Admin time saved
1m 57s
average per workflow
Admin time reduction
91%
average workflow reduction
Biggest workflow gain
Changing banner
3m 11s saved
The migration immediately made everyday website management dramatically faster. According to the migration report, common WordPress administrative tasks were completed an average of 91% faster, saving nearly two minutes per workflow.
Those improvements were made possible by a stronger technical foundation:
- Managed WordPress infrastructure built for production traffic
- Better caching and page delivery
- More predictable backups and recovery options
- Improved security controls and plugin management
- A cleaner path for staging, testing, and future development
- Better visibility into performance as real measurement data comes in
These improvements make the website faster and provide a safer, more maintainable platform for future redesigns, accessibility improvements, SEO work, and long-term growth.
The biggest impact is felt behind the scenes. If logging in, updating the homepage, uploading media, or editing a page takes too long, maintaining the website becomes frustrating and time-consuming. During concert season, even routine updates often require several of these tasks in succession. Saving one to three minutes on each workflow allows us to respond more quickly while spending less time waiting for the website.
Admin Workflow Time Before and After Migration
Measured timings from the migration report for common WordPress admin tasks.
One workflow alone saved more than three minutes every time it was performed.
Changing the homepage banner previously required 3 minutes and 58 seconds. After the migration, that same task took just 47 seconds—a savings of 3 minutes and 11 seconds every time the homepage is updated.
Workflow Time Saved
The largest gain came from changing the homepage banner, which dropped from 3 minutes 58 seconds to 47 seconds.
Migration report workflow data
- Logging in
- Before
- 2m 11s
- After
- 8s
- Saved
- 2m 3s
- Reduction
- 94%
- Enter dashboard
- Before
- 1m 54s
- After
- 3s
- Saved
- 1m 51s
- Reduction
- 97%
- Upload media
- Before
- 1m 26s
- After
- 6s
- Saved
- 1m 20s
- Reduction
- 93%
- Changing banner
- Before
- 3m 58s
- After
- 47s
- Saved
- 3m 11s
- Reduction
- 80%
- Edit/update page
- Before
- 1m 25s
- After
- 7s
- Saved
- 1m 18s
- Reduction
- 92%
Those internal gains made it possible to focus on improving the public website instead of fighting the infrastructure. Faster administration, better plugin compatibility, and a more reliable hosting environment gave us the freedom to begin optimizing the homepage experience, especially for mobile visitors.
Mobile homepage Lighthouse snapshot
Homepage Scores Before and After Migration Tuning
These scores compare the mobile homepage before the migration with the post-migration tuning made possible by faster admin workflows and better control over plugins and themes.
Performance
Speed and loading behavior
+45 points improvement
Accessibility
Usability for more visitors
+5 points improvement
Best Practices
Modern web health checks
+8 points improvement
SEO
Search visibility basics
+15 points improvement
| Category | Before migration | After tuning | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Performance | 43 | 88 | +45 |
| Accessibility | 91 | 96 | +5 |
| Best Practices | 69 | 77 | +8 |
| SEO | 85 | 100 | +15 |
The improvements extended beyond the WordPress dashboard. Once the migration was complete, we could begin tuning the public website itself.
The mobile homepage showed substantial improvements: Performance increased from 43 to 88, Accessibility improved from 91 to 96, Best Practices rose from 69 to 77, and SEO reached a perfect 100.
With a faster and more reliable hosting environment now in place, future phases of the project can focus on accessibility, UI/UX design, search engine optimization, content strategy, plugin optimization, and creating a more sustainable editing experience for non-technical contributors. Every improvement from this point forward is built on a platform designed to support the choir's long-term growth.