[ Industry case study — Web Development ]
Oxford college moves 4,000 pages to headless Payload CMS
Lemon Hive rebuilt Merton College's sprawling legacy site on Payload CMS, Next.js and Vercel, giving editors autonomy and meeting WCAG 2.2 AA.
Original project by Lemon Hive ↗Industry reference — not a NexSum Labs engagement.
- Client
- Merton College, University of Oxford
- Industry
- Higher education
- Services
- Headless CMS build, Content migration, Information architecture, Accessibility
- Year
- 2026
- Location
- Oxford, UK
The client
Merton College is one of the University of Oxford's oldest colleges, with more than 750 years of history. Its website serves prospective applicants as well as current students, staff and fellows.
The challenge
A decade of incremental additions had left a tangled site of nearly 4,000 pages that was hard to manage, secure and update. Routine content changes often needed a developer, frustrating the communications team. Keeping up with accessibility standards and security updates had become a constant struggle.
The solution
01IA and content modelling first
Lemon Hive interviewed the team, then designed a new information architecture and content model that gave every item a logical home. A careful migration playbook protected the college's history.
02Headless, open-source stack
Payload CMS handles content without vendor lock-in or licence fees, Next.js serves fast, secure pages with instant updates, and Vercel hosts globally. MongoDB and AWS S3 store content and media.
03Editor tooling
A Reference Mapping System shows every page linking to an item before deletion, and a BuildableList feature lets editors compose pages from approved blocks. Context-sensitive guides sit inside the CMS.
04Hybrid data migration
Where scripts hit messy legacy data, the team cleaned and restructured critical content by hand. The UI was modernised with a design partner while staying familiar to staff.
The results
Communications and admissions teams now draft, review and publish without developer help. The platform meets WCAG 2.2 AA and the college owns an open stack it can evolve. Sitebulb audit scores published with the case study rose across the board, including security from 53 to 100 and performance from 67 to 89.
Tools & stack
Original project by Lemon Hive ↗ — published by the delivering agency, included here as an industry reference.
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