Break the news, not the site: Leading news organizations upgrade their infrastructure ahead of the election

News sites built to survive election-day traffic

When a major political story breaks, news sites can see traffic spike within minutes. For outlets that aren't prepared, that surge often means slow page loads or full outages at the exact moment readers need reliable information. Code and Theory, a technology and creative agency that has digitally transformed more than 200 newsrooms, has made it a priority to build platforms that don't buckle under pressure.

The agency's approach centers on Next.js for frontend development and Vercel for managed infrastructure. That combination lets clients offload concerns about scaling, uptime, and DevOps, and instead focus on content and reader experience. Two recent migrations show how that plays out in practice.

RealClearPolling: A three-month migration from legacy PHP

After Code and Theory designed RealClearPolitics' main digital experience, the agency split polling data into a standalone site, RealClearPolling. That new property inherited a custom-built PHP CMS running on AWS, a stack that created performance bottlenecks, made content updates complicated, and turned deployments into risky operations for the development team.

The fix was a full migration to a modern stack: Contentful for content management, Next.js for the frontend, and Vercel for hosting. Git-based workflows now streamline the deployment process, and the results came quickly:

• Content presentation: Interactive charts and graphs make aggregated polling data easier to digest, and Next.js caching keeps them loading fast.
• Faster time to market: The entire migration took just three months from start to finish.
• Future migrations: The project's success pushed RealClearPolitics to plan a wider rollout of Next.js and Vercel across its entire portfolio.

Minnesota Star Tribune: One codebase, better SEO, a 30% Core Web Vitals jump

The Minnesota Star Tribune faced a tight deadline to move off its PHP and AWS infrastructure, which was both expensive and cumbersome to manage. The outlet also ran separate mobile and desktop sites, meaning two codebases to maintain and a negative impact on SEO. Reducing infrastructure costs and DevOps headcount were additional goals.

Code and Theory rebuilt the platform on Next.js and Vercel, consolidating the web and mobile experiences into a single responsive codebase. Vercel's redirects helped with cleaner content restructuring, and preview deployments gave the team room to iterate on complex graphic elements collaboratively before pushing changes live.

The launch delivered a visually refreshed homepage with a clearer story hierarchy and a stronger showcase for photojournalism. Breaking news pages now load faster on both desktop and mobile, and the site is more accessible overall. Measurable outcomes included:

• Conversion boost: The site hit 30-50% of its monthly new subscriber goal within 24 hours of launch.
• DevOps reduction: Web DevOps staffing dropped from three people to one, freeing two engineers for other priorities.
• Reliability under load: A major traffic spike during the VP pick announcement caused no noticeable change in load times.
• Core Web Vitals: Scores improved by 30%, with results now ranging in the 80s-90s out of 100.

Why the Next.js and Vercel stack fits news workflows

Code and Theory treats performance and security as brand issues, not just technical ones. A slow or unreliable site can diminish reader trust, particularly during high-stakes news cycles. The agency points to several specific capabilities that make Next.js and Vercel well suited for news organizations:

• Speed: Vercel's global edge network and built-in optimizations keep page loads fast for readers wherever they are.
• Incremental Static Regeneration (ISR): Static content can be updated without a full site rebuild, which suits outlets that refresh articles frequently while maintaining performance.
• Automatic static optimization: Next.js determines which pages can be served statically and which require server-side rendering, handling the mix of evergreen content and breaking news without manual tuning.
• Effortless scalability: Vercel scales automatically to absorb traffic spikes, so peak demand doesn't degrade the user experience.
• Reliability: Serverless infrastructure removes the downtime risk that comes with managing dedicated servers.

For RealClearPolitics and the Minnesota Star Tribune, the shift to Vercel's managed platform means their teams spend less time on infrastructure and more on journalism, with the confidence that the site will hold up when readers need it most.