Case Study: CALM Platform Rebuild

When you’re supporting a national charity like CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably), your digital platform isn’t just another website. It’s a vital service, one that needs to be fast, resilient, secure and ready for sudden spikes in demand when campaigns land or national conversations take off. After several successful years running on a WordPress platform we had previously helped CALM re-architect, the charity made a strategic decision to move to Craft CMS. The goal was simple: more flexibility for content teams, better long-term scalability, and a platform that could evolve alongside the organisation. Our role was to make sure that transition smooth, safe and future-proof.

The Challenge

Re-platforming a live charity website is never a “lift and shift” exercise, especially when uptime, performance and security are non-negotiable. CALM needed to:

• Move from WordPress to Craft CMS without impacting users or services
• Support their chosen design and development agency through the build
• Ensure the underlying AWS infrastructure could handle Craft’s requirements
• Prepare the platform for traffic spikes driven by campaigns and media attention
• Strengthen security and resilience without adding operational complexity

All of this had to happen while keeping day-to-day operations running smoothly.

The Solution

We worked closely with CALM and their design and development agency to re-architect the entire platform rebuild around Craft CMS, focusing on reliability, scalability and ease of management. Our involvement covered both the application layer and the infrastructure underneath it:

Platform & CMS Support

• Assisted with Craft CMS installation, configuration and testing
• Supported template builds and configuration alongside the agency team
• Ensured the platform was fully production-ready before launch

AWS Infrastructure Re-Architecture

• Re-architected the clustered AWS environment to better support Craft
• Implemented upgrades to improve load balancing and auto-scaling
• Carried out load testing and security hardening to prepare for real-world traffic

Delivery & Go-Live

• Supported the full go-live process to minimise risk and downtime
• Ensured performance and stability from day one

On top of this, we implemented a full CI/CD pipeline, giving CALM multiple test, staging and production environments. This meant changes could be tested properly, deployed safely, and rolled out with confidence.

The Results

The move to Craft CMS, backed by a re-engineered AWS platform, gave CALM a modern, flexible platform that could handle heavy traffic and scale as needed. The site became faster, more resilient, and better equipped to support campaigns without interruption, giving the charity the confidence to grow its digital presence.

What We Delivered Over the Years

Following the re-platform rebuild, we continued to support CALM by helping their design and build agencies with template deployments and testing and managing the overall release process. We also maintained the AWS environment through patching and upgrades, and supported major Craft platform updates including Craft 4 and Craft 5. Alongside this, we provided full monitoring at both the VM and software level, with cascade notifications and SLA-backed support. This allowed us to spot issues early, triage quickly, and ensure the platform stayed secure and reliable - even during high-traffic campaign periods. For further details, feel free to get in touch.