Case study · Tourism & Hospitality

Forty WordPress sites, one Contentful platform

  • Next.js
  • Contentful
  • TypeScript
  • AWS
✓ Verified Review

“National Digital provided extensive support to our development team throughout all stages of the project. Their expertise in modern web technologies was invaluable.”

Jeff Dermann
Product Owner at NRMA Parks
40 → 1

WordPress sites, now one release process

Zero

Plugin code at the public edge

50+

Parks and resorts publishing from it

~6×

Faster to bring a new park online

The challenge

Forty individually managed WordPress sites meant forty plugin sets to patch, forty deploys per brand change, inconsistent branding, and no shared content model across 50+ properties - a maintenance surface that grew with every new park.

What we built

A single Contentful headless CMS instance feeding a shared Next.js front end, so every property publishes from one content model with a create-once, distribute-everywhere workflow.

  • Content model design in Contentful
  • Per-property content migration off WordPress
  • Next.js front-end rebuild
  • Phased cut-over across 50+ properties

The stack

Content modelling in Contentful, a phased per-property migration off WordPress, a shared Next.js front end, and a set of AWS-hosted booking, availability and guest microservices that integrate the reservation and property systems behind it.

Channels & edgePark & resort sites
API & integrationContentful delivery API
Applications & workflowsNext.js front end
Content platformContentful CMS
Hosting & deliveryCDN, monitoring

The outcome

The consolidation removed the WordPress plugin attack surface across every property and collapsed 40+ separate update-and-patch workflows into one. Content publishes once from a shared model and lands on every property site; booking and guest journeys integrate through AWS microservices rather than per-site plugins. The platform is the system new properties onboard onto, not another site to build.

Where it went next

NRMA Parks & Resorts continues to onboard new properties directly onto the shared Contentful/Next.js platform rather than standing up another WordPress site.

This case study describes real work delivered by National Digital for NRMA Parks & Resorts. Selected figures are indicative and rounded.

Key Takeaways

What consolidation actually removed

  • Forty-plus per-site update and patch workflows collapsed into one platform release process.Critical

    Every WordPress site previously carried its own theme, plugin set and patch schedule. A brand change meant forty deployments and a vulnerability meant forty patches, each needing separate scheduling, testing and verification by someone who knew that site.

  • Removing the plugin layer removed the attack surface it carried, across every property.Critical

    A headless CMS with a statically generated front end means there is no executable plugin code at the public edge. The security posture stops depending on forty independent patch cadences staying current simultaneously.

  • One shared content model turns publishing into create-once, distribute-everywhere.Important

    Estate-wide content is authored once in Contentful and lands across every property site, while property-specific fields stay local. Editors work in one system rather than forty separately themed admin panels.

  • Transactional services stay outside the CMS, so content velocity never trades against booking reliability.Important

    Booking, availability and guest services run as AWS microservices that the front end consumes. Content releases and transactional deployments are independent, and neither is coupled to a CMS plugin.

  • A phased, property-by-property migration keeps every cut-over small and reversible.Helpful

    Designing the content model first and migrating in phases meant the model was validated against real properties early, while each individual cut-over stayed observable and recoverable rather than being one estate-wide switch.

More than fifty NRMA holiday parks and resorts publish from one Contentful content model into a shared Next.js front end. The consolidation replaced forty per-site update workflows with a single release process and took the WordPress plugin layer off the public edge entirely.

Questions decision-makers ask about this build

Why replace forty WordPress sites rather than standardise them?
Standardising still leaves forty codebases. Each site carried its own theme, plugin set and patch schedule, so a brand change meant forty deployments and a single vulnerability meant forty patches - a maintenance surface that grew with every new park. One Contentful content model feeding a shared Next.js front end collapses that into a single release process, and a new property onboards onto the platform rather than adding to it.
What happened to the security exposure of the old estate?
It largely went away with the plugins. Forty independently maintained WordPress installations meant forty plugin inventories to track, each internet-facing and on its own release cadence. A headless CMS with a statically generated front end removes that executable plugin layer from the public edge, and patching becomes one platform release instead of forty separately scheduled and separately verified ones.
How does content publishing work across more than fifty properties now?
Create once, distribute everywhere. Every property publishes from a single shared content model in Contentful, so brand-level content lands across the estate without being re-entered per site, while property-specific fields stay local to that property. Editors work in one system with one set of conventions rather than forty admin panels with forty slightly different themes and quirks.
Where do booking and availability live in this architecture?
Behind the content platform rather than inside it. Booking, availability and guest services run as AWS-hosted microservices integrating the reservation and property systems, and the Next.js front end consumes them. Keeping transactional services separate from the CMS means content velocity and booking reliability are not competing for the same release window, and neither depends on a CMS plugin.
How do you migrate forty live sites without a big-bang cut-over?
Property by property. The shared content model is designed first, then properties migrate off WordPress in phases onto the platform, so each cut-over is small, observable and reversible rather than one estate-wide switch with no way back. It also tests the content model against real properties early, while changing that model is still comparatively cheap to do.
Is a headless CMS the right answer for every multi-site estate?
Not automatically. It pays off when many sites share most of their content model and the real cost is duplicated maintenance, which is the NRMA Parks and Resorts case exactly. Where sites genuinely differ in structure, or one small editorial team is productive in a single install, the consolidation gain is smaller. The first question is how much of the estate is the same thing repeated.

More client work

What's next

Consolidating a fragmented estate?

NRMA Parks and Resorts runs a national holiday-park network on one content platform National Digital helped build. If you're weighing a similar consolidation, see how we approach WordPress migration to a headless CMS and custom booking and scheduling systems, part of our wider headless CMS work.

Want a platform like this for your business?

Tell us what you're building. We'll come back within one business day with what we'd do first and what it would take.

or enquiries@nationaldigital.com.au1300 800 855