Craft CMS enquiries from York generally mean one of two things: an install that's holding up but ignored, or one that's actively broken with nobody left to call.
Karl's the only one who ever touches it. He's worked in Craft CMS and ExpressionEngine exclusively since starting Expression 37 in 2007. You're speaking to him, not a team.
Before anything's recommended, he goes through the install properly. That's usually a fix, a version upgrade, or an ongoing retainer.
What makes York's Craft sites unusually varied?
An economic mix most cities this size don't have: steady heritage tourism, a genuine insurance and financial services cluster including a major Aviva site, and a growing biotech and science presence around the university. Craft's turned up across all three, particularly the tourism and hospitality side, where installs were often built years back and left to run without much further attention.
Karl picks these up wherever they've drifted to: real seasonal traffic nobody's planned properly for, a developer who's stopped taking on Craft work, or bespoke booking functionality only the original builder ever understood. The codebase gets read first, always, rather than guessed at from outside.
The install this usually turns out to be:
A tourism or hospitality site whose booking system sees genuine peaks, where a slow checkout on a bank holiday weekend has a direct cost. A financial or insurance firm where accuracy and uptime matter more than most, and a badly maintained CMS becomes a quiet compliance risk. Somewhere with Salesforce or Stripe wired in by a developer no longer around to explain how. And several major Craft versions behind, needing every plugin honestly compatibility-checked before an upgrade's safe.
Common questions York clients ask:
How does an engagement actually start?
Karl audits the codebase directly before any quote's given. Most people get in touch after something specific: a booking system that struggled over a busy weekend, a security notice on a plugin nobody's touched in years, or the realisation nobody on staff can explain part of the site.
Do you need to be in York for this to work?
No. Everything, plugin review through deployment, happens remotely, and York's easily reachable for the rare case a face-to-face conversation genuinely helps.
Our traffic spikes hard at certain times of year, does that change anything?
It changes what gets prioritised first. A tourism site needs stable hosting and a properly tested booking flow well ahead of the next peak, not a scramble once it's already underway.
Can an install be taken over from an agency that's stopped supporting Craft?
Yes, one of the more common starting points. Working out what's genuinely custom against a modified plugin takes an honest read of the code first.
Is an old Craft version a serious concern?
Less than people usually think. The core rarely causes issues by itself. The real exposure sits in whatever plugins have gone unmaintained alongside it.
What's the pricing structure?
Defined work, an audit or upgrade, gets a fixed cost. Ongoing support runs monthly. The number's agreed either way before work starts.
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.
