Oxford enquiries about ExpressionEngine support usually mean the site's in one of two states: fine but neglected, or genuinely causing problems with the agency behind it no longer around.
Karl's the one you'd speak to, always. Expression 37's specialised in ExpressionEngine and Craft CMS since founding in 2007. You deal with him personally, not a wider team.
He works through the build first, always, before saying what it needs. That's usually a fix, a version upgrade, or an ongoing retainer.
Where we typically come in:
- Academic departments and research groups whose site holds genuinely important content, publication archives, funding pages, admissions detail, that can't just be rebuilt from scratch.
- Publishing and biotech spinouts running on an EE install set up by a founding team member who's since left.
- Sites with years of accumulated custom fields that need proper documentation before any safe changes can be made.
- Organisations with Salesforce handling donor, alumni, or applicant data connected directly to the CMS, where the integration needs as much care as the site itself.
- Teams who inherited a site rather than commissioned it and want someone to properly explain what they're now responsible for.
How a typical engagement starts:
Oxford enquiries often begin with a handover, a new administrator or comms lead discovering a site nobody around them can fully explain. Others come from a specific failure, a form that's stopped submitting correctly, or a security review that's flagged an install several versions out of date. Karl audits the actual structure before quoting anything, and a good number of those audits turn into ongoing support.
Common questions Oxford clients ask:
Do we need someone local to Oxford, or is remote support genuinely enough?
Remote covers everything in practice, code changes, deployments, ongoing maintenance. Oxford is easy enough to reach for the rare case an in-person conversation adds something, but it's rarely required.
Nobody here fully understands how our site is built, can that be fixed?
Yes, and it's one of the more common starting points for Oxford institutions specifically. The custom field structure gets properly mapped and documented before anything else happens.
Our content is genuinely important and can't just be rebuilt, does that change your approach?
It does. Anything touching research archives, admissions data, or long-standing content gets handled with extra care around backups and staged testing before changes go live.
How out of date can an install be before it's a real problem?
Security is the immediate concern regardless of version. Beyond that, older EE installs increasingly run into add-ons that have stopped being maintained, which is usually the bigger obstacle when an upgrade is finally on the table.
We handle donor and applicant data through a Salesforce connection, is that something you can support?
Yes, integrations like that are usually built directly into the ExpressionEngine templates rather than sitting separately, so reviewing one properly means understanding how the whole site fits together.
What does pricing look like?
A fixed cost for scoped project work, a monthly retainer for ongoing support. Both agreed before anything starts.
What's the sensible first step?
A conversation about what's currently on the site, its EE version, and what's prompting the enquiry. That's enough for a clear, honest first assessment.
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.
