While the idea of starting fresh can be tempting, a complete rewrite comes with significant risks and challenges. Understanding when and how to approach a rewrite is critical for success, as the decision can have long-lasting implications for the organization.

CMS Bottleneck Challenges

Our client had been operating on a legacy CMS —WordPress— which, while originally built for flexibility, backward compatibility, and extensibility, had become a bottleneck. Its plugin-dependent structure, limited security, and lack of enterprise-grade support were misaligned with the client’s scale and ambitions. Managing hundreds of locations and thousands of individual providers required a platform that could deliver seamless booking, reliable information flow, and long-term scalability—needs that the existing CMS could no longer meet.

The CMS was mission-critical; without it, the organization lacked the ability to process bookings, manage operations, or distribute essential information.

Umbraco Implementation Success

Migrating to a modern, well-supported CMS was crucial, and it was equally important that the migration succeed flawlessly. After careful planning, Umbraco was chosen. Built on .NET (C#), Umbraco follows modern software engineering principles, enabling well-structured, maintainable code and allowing developers to leverage features like dependency injection, strongly-typed models, and unit testing.

The project began with thorough documentation of all existing features and careful roadmap planning. Each feature was then implemented in the new Umbraco system. The migration process involved mapping WordPress fields to Umbraco fields, executing dozens of dry runs, performing programmatic verifications, and conducting random end-user reviews to ensure accuracy.

Once the migration was complete, extensive user acceptance testing was carried out in a staging environment to confirm functionality and usability. Following this, load testing using k6 ensured the system could handle expected traffic without issues.

Controlled Go-Live Execution

The final cutover was executed during a low-traffic period. Logs, traffic, and resource usage were carefully monitored throughout the transition. The cutover was successful, and the old WordPress system was shut down one month later, retained only as a backup measure.

This project highlights the importance of methodical planning, rigorous testing, and thoughtful execution in CMS migrations, ensuring both business continuity and modernized infrastructure.

If you would rather have a professional team do the heavy lifting for you, or have any questions please feel free to contact Team Brookvale here.