Most Craft CMS enquiries out of Durham involve one of two things: an install that's running fine but ignored, or one that's broken outright with the original developer long gone.
Karl's the only person who works on it. Craft CMS and ExpressionEngine are the two platforms Expression 37's stuck to since 2007. No wider team, no account manager.
He goes through the install thoroughly before saying what it needs. That's usually a fix, a version upgrade, or an ongoing retainer.
A cathedral, a Russell Group university, and a mining past
That combination produces a lot of small, independent businesses, academic-adjacent organisations, and heritage attractions in Durham, and quite a few of their websites run on Craft builds that haven't had a proper look in years. The city's identity leans heavily on all three, and the sites that serve it tend to reflect that mix.
Expression 37 supports Durham organisations in that position: a previous developer who's stopped responding, several versions behind, or content management that's grown messier than anyone intended. Karl reads the actual codebase before quoting, rather than working from assumptions.
Common questions Durham clients ask:
What's the honest first step in taking this on?
Reading the actual code, templates and plugins both, before a single number's discussed. An enquiry form that's stopped working, a security notice on something old, or nobody currently involved understanding the setup, one of those usually starts the conversation.
Does being outside Durham itself cause any real friction?
Rarely. Rail links make an in-person visit straightforward the odd time it's genuinely warranted, but the work itself doesn't depend on it.
Can an install be taken over from a developer who's stopped trading?
Comes up regularly. Working out what's genuinely custom versus a modified plugin takes an actual read of the code, not an assumption based on the front end.
Should we be concerned about how old our Craft version is?
Less than most expect. The core software rarely causes issues on its own. It's the unmaintained plugins and stale Composer dependencies around it that tend to be the real problem.
Do you handle our HubSpot connection too, or just the CMS?
Both. That integration's usually wired directly into the templates, so treating it separately from the CMS itself tends to be where problems get missed.
What's the general shape of pricing?
A defined piece of work, an audit or upgrade, gets a fixed price agreed upfront. Ongoing support runs as a monthly retainer, with the cost settled either way before anything starts.
What tends to bring people to us:
A heritage attraction or visitor site where getting the details right actually matters, given how tourism-dependent the local economy is. A research-adjacent organisation whose content has outgrown a flat page structure, needing something that genuinely scales. A site running HubSpot for enquiries, that connection quietly needing more attention than it's been getting. And an install orphaned by a developer or small agency that's stopped trading, with nobody left able to say for certain what's actually installed.
Ready to get started?
If your website is business-critical and needs a specialist who will take proper long-term ownership of it, get in touch. Karl will respond personally and give you an honest view of how we can help.
