Custom CMS Development in Sydney

WordPress, Umbraco, headless and fully custom content management, built in Sydney and set up so the people who edit the site every week can do it without calling a developer.

Doodle illustration of a page layout with text blocks, image frames, a pencil, a globe and stacked pages bursting out of an open filing cabinet drawer

What do we build on a CMS?

From a new WordPress or Umbraco site to a small editor written for one campaign microsite, this is the CMS work we do.

WordPress Builds & Rescues

New WordPress sites built with as few plugins as the job allows, and older ones taken over and cleaned up: plugins pruned, updates brought current, and a page builder nobody dares touch replaced with templates editors can use. Why the plugin count matters is in the risks of using plugins.

Umbraco Websites

We are a Registered Umbraco Partner. Umbraco is an open-source CMS built on .NET, and it suits organisations that already run on Microsoft systems or want a site their own developers can extend. We build new Umbraco sites and take on ones already running.

Headless CMS

Contentful, DatoCMS, Sanity or Payload hold the content and serve it to a custom front end, an app, or several sites at once. Payload is open source and can keep the content in your own database. Headless pays off when the same content appears in several places, and rarely for a single marketing site.

Custom CMS for Microsites

A campaign microsite or a small site with a handful of editable pages rarely needs WordPress and a dozen plugins. We build a light editor for those pages alone, with only the fields their content needs. It loads fast and leaves very little to patch or update.

Editor Experience & Content Modelling

Deciding what kinds of content the site holds, which fields each one has, and how much of the layout editors can change. Get it right and someone in marketing can publish a new case study in ten minutes that still looks like it belongs.

CMS Migrations

Moving from one CMS to another, or from an ageing custom system onto a supported one. Content is mapped and cleaned on the way across, and every old URL gets a redirect so search rankings come with it. What that involves is in Moving the Data Is the Part of a Rebuild Nobody Quotes For.

Multisite & Multilingual

Several brands, regions or languages run from one installation. Templates and shared content are managed once, each site looks after its own pages, and permissions decide who can publish where.

Integrations

Connecting the CMS to the CRM, site search, marketing automation and the systems behind your forms, so an enquiry arrives in Salesforce or Dynamics with the right fields filled in instead of sitting in someone's inbox.

Support & Hosting

Secure hosting set up for speed, security patches, CMS and plugin updates, and the small content and template changes a site needs once it is live. What that pays for is set out in What Am I Actually Paying For After Launch?

The First Question

Off-the-Shelf CMS or Custom?

Off the Shelf

WordPress, Umbraco and the other established systems handle pages, news, case studies and forms well. Each has a large community behind it and plenty of developers who know it, so you are not tied to one supplier. When the site’s main job is publishing, one of these with templates built for your brand may be all it needs.

It is one of three routes, and the one most often assumed before anyone has asked what the site needs to do. Picking the CMS first is how a site ends up with forty plugins doing work they were never designed for. Unless there is a standing reason to use a particular platform, such as an IT policy, a licence the organisation already holds, or a team that already runs it, the CMS does not need choosing before the project starts. It comes out of scoping, once we know who edits the site, what it has to connect to, and what it does besides publish.

Custom Built

An established CMS with custom work around it. The CMS holds the words and images, and code written for the job does the rest: middleware that keeps it in step with the CRM or a product database, a members’ area beside it, or a custom front end fed from a headless CMS. You keep the editing tools, drafts and permissions a mature CMS already has, and the parts particular to your business get code written for them instead of a plugin that nearly fits.

A fully custom build. Sometimes the content is bound up with how the system works: records members edit themselves, or data that drives quoting, bookings or approvals. A general-purpose CMS can end up fighting that job, so content management is designed into the custom system from the start. It suits the small end too: a microsite with a few editable pages, where a light editor written for those pages leaves far less to maintain than a full CMS and its plugins. How we match the technology to the need is in “We Need a React App” and Other Interesting Questions.

How Does a CMS Project Run?

Every project we run follows the same four stages. On a CMS project most of the risk sits in the content model and the migration, so both are settled early.

Scoping

A short first phase lists the content types and templates the site needs, who edits what and who approves it, the systems it connects to, and what has to come across from the old site. We ask to see the old site’s back end as well as its pages, because that decides how much work the move is. It is where the choice between an established CMS, custom work around one, or a custom build gets made, and it produces a technical approach and a realistic estimate.

Design and Build

Templates and content types arrive in stages you can log in to and try editing, so feedback on how the admin works lands as early as feedback on how the site looks, while acting on it is still cheap.

Testing

Our own testers check every stage on the devices and browsers your visitors use, and on the editing side too, where trouble usually starts with a heading that runs to three lines or a page published without its image. Migrated content is checked against the old site, by record count and by eye. For sites that hold members’ personal information, we scope independent penetration testing before launch.

Launch and Support

Cutover is planned around a short content freeze, so nothing an editor publishes in launch week is lost, and every old URL redirects to its new home. After launch comes hosting, patches, CMS updates and the small changes a live site needs.

What Drives the Cost?

A number given before anyone has seen the content and the old site's back end is a guess. These four things move a CMS estimate most, and once they are clear we are comfortable working to a fixed price.

Content Types and Templates: How many kinds of page and content the site needs, and how much layout freedom editors get within them.

Editors and Approvals: How many people edit, what each is allowed to change, and whether pages need sign-off before they go live.

Content to Migrate: How many pages, posts and files come across, how tidy they are, and how many old URLs need a redirect.

Integrations and Compliance: The CRM, search and marketing tools the site talks to, and the accessibility, privacy and security obligations that come with it.

Why an Australian Studio

About Code Brewery

We are based in Sydney and build for organisations across Australia. Our working day overlaps with every Australian business day, so when an editor cannot publish on the morning a campaign goes out, someone who built the site is already at work.

Our team covers the whole job: senior developers, project managers, quality assurance testers and digital designers, so a site does not need to be stitched together from separate suppliers. We work for businesses that come to us directly, and as the production team behind a number of creative and digital agencies.

Government and enterprise buyers can check the paperwork before the first meeting. Code Brewery is an Advanced supplier on the NSW Government ICT Services Scheme (SCM0020), and is rated Very Strong on the ProcessUnity Risk Index, the highest of its five ratings.

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