Truth Press— High-Load Headless News Platform
About
Truth Press is a high-traffic US news blog that needed the speed and UX of modern social networks while keeping the editorial flexibility of WordPress. The new platform delivers instant navigation, real-time interaction and robust SEO for millions of monthly readers.
Project
- Client / Truth Press
- Category / News platform
- Tech Stack / Headless WordPress, Next.js (React, SPA + SSR), Node.js, REST & GraphQL API, Redis
- Date / April 2025 - October 2025
Company
A high-performance headless WordPress platform for a US news publisher with 2M+ monthly readers, combining SPA-speed navigation, SSR for SEO, infinite scroll and a social-style comment system built for heavy traffic and real-time engagement.
Project scope
We started with discovery and UX research: analysing reader behaviour on high-traffic news and social platforms (Twitter/X, TikTok, Substack) and mapping requirements for performance, engagement and editorial workflows. Based on this, we created wireframes for the homepage, article layouts, infinite scroll behaviour, navigation, and a “social-style” interaction layer (likes, shares, comments).
On the technical side, we designed a headless architecture with WordPress as the content hub and a Next.js front end for SPA navigation and server-side rendering. The scope included:
- Information architecture and content model setup in WordPress (post types, taxonomies, SEO fields).
- UX/UI for article pages, comment threads, and engagement widgets (views, likes, saves).
- Implementation of SPA routing with SSR for all key landing and article pages.
- Advanced SEO configuration (clean URLs, structured data, Open Graph/Twitter tags, XML sitemaps, canonical handling for infinite scroll).
- Magic-link profile authentication using email-based login to simplify onboarding and remove passwords.
- Custom, high-load comment system with threads, replies, editing, likes, and moderation tools inspired by TikTok/Twitter behaviour.
- Real-time update layer for views, likes and comments counters without full-page reload.
- Infinite scroll implementation for feed and article navigation with smart prefetching and ad-friendly loading.
- High-load optimisation: caching strategy, API optimisation, CDN and WAF configuration, performance budgets and monitoring.
Outcome
- Re-designed UX and article layout optimised for reading and engagement.
- SPA experience with instant navigation between articles and sections.
- Server-side rendered pages for strong SEO and share previews.
- Infinite scroll feed and article navigation with optimised loading strategy.
- Email-based magic link authentication for reader profiles.
- Custom, full-featured comment system (threads, replies, edits, likes).
- Real-time counters for views, likes and comments.
- Scalable infrastructure tuned for 2M+ monthly visitors and traffic spikes.
- Advanced caching and CDN setup to reduce server load and response times.
Speed & UX
Instant-feeling article navigation with SPA + SSR.
Engagement
Threaded, editable comments and real-time reactions.
Scalability
High-load architecture and caching for traffic spikes.
SEO & Visibility
SSR + structured data to protect and grow organic traffic.
Editorial Flexibility
WordPress admin with an independent React front end.
Technology
Truth Press is built as a headless WordPress solution with a Next.js front end. WordPress acts purely as a content management and SEO admin, exposing data via REST/GraphQL APIs. Next.js handles both SPA navigation and server-side rendering, so articles load instantly for users while search engines still see fully rendered, indexable HTML.
Real-time updates for views, likes and comments are powered by targeted API endpoints and lightweight client-side polling or push mechanisms, avoiding full reloads and reducing server load. A custom comment engine replicates the behaviour of major social platforms: nested threads, inline replies, editing, likes, and moderation tools, all optimised for high traffic.
Caching is implemented at multiple levels (object cache, full-page caching, CDN edge caching) and front-end code is tuned for bundle size and lazy loading. Cloudflare (or similar CDN/WAF) protects and accelerates the platform globally, while CI/CD ensures safe, repeatable deployments as the product evolves.
