Moving Saitai.lt from Joomla to a static Astro website

The brief

The old site ran on Joomla with a page builder: every page was heavy, and maintaining content and language versions took a long time. We needed a fast, easy-to-maintain system without losing a single URL already showing in search, and without dropping any of the three languages.

The solution

First we listed every old URL in all three languages and decided for each one: keep it, move it with a 301 or merge it into another page. Portfolio URLs (319 projects × 3 languages) stayed the same, so they need no redirects.

We moved the content out of the Joomla database with read-only scripts: texts, project fields, galleries and translation links became data files from which Astro generates the pages. Images are optimised at build time (WebP, several sizes), and unused originals never reach the final package.

Every page has a canonical, hreflang (lt, ru, en and x-default) and schema.org data; project pages carry CreativeWork, and images get their own sitemap. The enquiry form runs on PHP with spam protection, and Google Analytics only switches on after the visitor consents.

Integrations and modules

• Content migration from the Joomla database by script
• hreflang and canonical for three languages
• schema.org: Organization, Service, CreativeWork, BreadcrumbList
• PHP enquiry form with anti-spam
• Google Analytics 4 with Consent Mode v2

Result

Before launch we measured Lighthouse mobile locally: the home page and a service page scored 99 / 100 / 100 / 100, and the accessibility check (axe) found 0 violations. We will publish other results (search traffic after the move) once we have at least a few months of data.