Swindon's Craft CMS enquiries usually take one of two forms: an install ticking along neglected, or one that's genuinely broken with the developer who built it long gone.
Karl's the person who works on it, every time. Craft CMS and ExpressionEngine are the only platforms Expression 37's ever touched, since 2007. No wider team stands in the way.
Before quoting anything, he reviews the install properly. What that turns up decides whether it's a fix, a version upgrade, or an ongoing retainer.
How did a railway town end up with a cluster of corporate HQs?
The rail engineering heritage laid the groundwork, and Swindon's business base has grown well beyond it since, with a genuine cluster of national and financial services headquarters now sitting alongside the original manufacturing roots. A fair number of those companies are still running Craft installs built for a much smaller version of the business than the one now trying to use them.
Expression 37 works with Swindon businesses in that position: a developer who's stopped taking on Craft work, several major versions behind, or bespoke functionality nobody currently on staff understands properly. Karl reads the actual codebase before quoting, not just the brief.
Common questions Swindon clients ask:
What's the very first thing that happens on a new enquiry?
A proper look at what's actually there, templates, plugins, whatever's grown organically over the years, since guessing scope from a description is how quotes end up wrong.
Does the Swindon-to-London rail link mean anything for how you work?
Only that a meeting's never actually difficult to arrange, if one's ever genuinely useful. Almost none of the actual work depends on being in the same room.
Our site's outgrown what it was originally built for, is that a common issue here?
Very common, especially with fast-growing firms. It needs a content structure that can actually scale, not one stretched further than it was ever designed to go.
Can an install be picked up from a previous developer who's disappeared?
Yes, and it's one of the more typical ways an engagement starts. Establishing what's genuinely custom versus a modified plugin is always the first step, based on an actual read of the code.
Is an old Craft version something we should worry about?
Less than most assume. The core rarely causes issues by itself. The real exposure is in whatever plugins have been left unmaintained alongside it, and in dependencies nobody's kept current.
What does an ongoing retainer actually include?
Faster response on anything urgent, someone actually watching the install rather than discovering problems weeks late, and a developer who already understands your setup instead of starting from zero each time.
Where we typically come in:
A fast-growing firm whose site was built for a team a third the size of the one now trying to run it through. A company with HubSpot or Salesforce capturing leads, a connection that deserves the same ongoing attention as the CMS itself rather than being forgotten once it's working. An install left stranded when whoever originally understood the tech, often a co-founder or an early hire, moved on. And a Craft version several releases behind, where the real upgrade work is plugin compatibility and Composer, not the platform swap itself.
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.
