An estate of sites does not fail dramatically. It drifts — one site a version behind, then three, then one nobody has logged into for two years.
Groups with several brands, agencies with client portfolios and organisations with a site per division all share the same shape of problem. No individual site is badly looked after; the estate as a whole simply has no single view, so the one that needs attention is the one nobody is thinking about.
It is worse when the sites were built at different times by different people. Knowledge sits with whoever happened to build each one, and when they leave it goes with them. What remains is a list of domains and a vague sense that most of them are probably fine.
What fixes it is boring and effective: one team with the whole estate in view, the same patching schedule applied to everything, and the arrangement written down so it survives somebody leaving.
What we do
Working UK-wide and internationally — directly with businesses, and white label behind design and marketing agencies.
Discuss a projectWhat exists, what each site runs on, who owns the domain and where it is hosted. Surprisingly often this does not exist anywhere.
Patching applied consistently rather than per site when somebody remembers, which is how the forgotten one happens.
Most estates are mixed origin. Taking on somebody else's code is a normal part of this, not an exception.
One compromised site should not be able to reach the others. On a shared arrangement that is not automatic.
A fix or an improvement worked out on one site can often be applied across several, which is the economy of scale an estate should give you.
What was updated, what was fixed and what needs attention — across everything, not per site.
Merging several brand sites into one platform suits some groups and destroys what makes the brands distinct for others. We would ask before assuming.
An estate running three different CMSs is common. Standardising is sometimes worth it and sometimes an expensive way to achieve very little.
Quoting to look after sites nobody has catalogued is guesswork. Establishing what is there is the first piece of work.
A lot of our work is delivered white label or under agreement, so these describe the problem and the approach rather than naming the client.
Ten brand websites across one instruments group. Several we built, the rest we inherited — and all ten are hosted, maintained and supported by the same team.
Multisite · MultilingualA multisite platform serving several regional websites from one build, each with its own content and language.
Migration · DevelopmentFive separate legacy CMS sites, five databases and five themes, consolidated into a single multilingual multisite CMS platform.
Preventive WordPress security: filtering before the CMS loads, site isolation, patching and scanning — and an honest account of what it cannot promise.
Managed website backups held off-site, with the job verified as having run and the restore actually tested. What most backup services never check.
Monitoring that checks real pages rather than just the home page, and alerts the people who can fix it rather than only telling you.
We will tell you what each one is running, which need attention first, and what looking after the lot would involve — including any that turn out not to be worth keeping.