Most Craft CMS enquiries from Wigan involve an install that's either running fine but neglected, or one that's stopped working with the developer who built it long gone.
Karl's who takes these on, always has. Craft CMS and ExpressionEngine are the only platforms Expression 37's ever worked in, since 2007. You go straight to him, not a team.
The install gets a proper look before anything's quoted. That's usually a fix, a version upgrade, or an ongoing retainer.
From mill town to distribution hub, what stayed the same?
The old mill and mining industries gave way decades ago to a distribution and warehousing economy sitting right on the M6, alongside a rugby league heritage the town takes seriously. A good number of local business websites were built on Craft during the platform's growth years here and have run without close attention since.
Karl picks up Wigan installs at exactly that stage: an agency that's stopped answering the phone, several major versions behind, or functionality bolted on by someone long gone. The actual code gets looked at before anything's said about cost or timescale.
Common questions Wigan clients ask:
What's the practical starting point for a job like this?
Reading the codebase properly, always, before a number gets attached to anything. An order confirmation that stopped sending, a plugin flagged by a security scanner, or simply nobody feeling confident enough to touch the site anymore, one of those usually triggers the first call.
Is it awkward working with someone based outside Wigan?
Not once the work actually starts. Everything's handled remotely from review through to deployment, and a visit's easy enough to arrange the rare time it's genuinely useful.
Can you pick up a site an old agency built and abandoned?
Regularly. Figuring out what's bespoke versus a modified plugin always comes first, based on the actual codebase rather than a guess.
Is it a problem if our Craft version is really old?
Usually not on its own. The risk sits with unmaintained plugins and stale Composer dependencies more than the core software, so that's where an audit focuses first.
What if we're honestly not sure what our own site does anymore?
Nothing unusual about that. It just means the audit does double duty, mapping the site as it actually is before anyone discusses what should change.
How does pricing actually work?
One number for a scoped job, fixed and agreed before it starts. A different arrangement, billed monthly, if it turns into ongoing support. Nothing gets committed to blind either way.
Who this tends to matter for:
A distribution or logistics firm whose site shows stock or delivery figures that genuinely need to be right, not approximate. A business with HubSpot feeding leads in from the site, with nobody left who properly understands how that pipe works. An install where the developer's simply stopped replying, leaving it technically online but effectively abandoned. And a Craft version old enough that a proper upgrade means a plugin-by-plugin check rather than a routine bump.
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.
