A custom property website and CMS replacing WordPress

In 2025, a property developer was actively marketing a residential property, but its ageing WordPress site no longer reflected the experience it was selling. The site also had security concerns and had become difficult for the team to maintain. I led the technical revamp from architecture through delivery and deployment, working with a lead UX designer to turn the approved redesign into a custom public website and CMS.

The old site was holding back the marketing drive

The client was actively marketing the property, so the website was a central part of how prospective buyers encountered it. Its dated design no longer matched the quality of the development or the campaign around it. The revamp therefore needed to do more than modernise the technology; it had to give the property a stronger digital presentation.

At the same time, the client's team could no longer maintain the WordPress site confidently. Routine changes depended on its theme, plugins, and specialist knowledge they did not have in-house. Updates risked breaking something elsewhere, while delaying them left maintenance and security concerns unresolved.

How I made maintainability part of the product

A custom build is not automatically secure. Its advantage here was control: we could include only the publishing capabilities the client needed and make access, validation, and accountability part of the application.

I led the rebuild as a public website paired with an authenticated administration portal. Roles limit which parts of the CMS an administrator can read or change, inactive accounts can be blocked, submissions are validated, and administrative changes are recorded in an activity history.

The result has a smaller, more deliberate administration surface and a defined release process. The client no longer depends on arbitrary themes and plugins, while the delivery team has one application to maintain and update.

A CMS shaped around the property experience

The lead UX designer owned the design direction and approved interface. I worked closely with them to translate that work into the responsive production site, clarifying interactions and handling the engineering decisions needed across screen sizes and editable content.

The public site is highly visual, so a generic page editor would still have pushed layout work back to developers. I shaped the CMS around the content the marketing team actually manages: page sections, campaign banners, property highlights, galleries, amenities, testimonials, news, sustainability articles, and search metadata.

Editors can update content and media without changing layout code. The structure gives them control over the site while preserving the design and behaviour across desktop and mobile.

For prospective buyers, the rebuilt site connects the wider location and master plan with homes, villas, beach lots, amenities, galleries, floor plans, virtual tours, news, and inquiries. The same content managed in the CMS drives that public experience.

The publishing team owns the day-to-day surface

The completed revamp replaced the old WordPress site with a purpose-built publishing system. Editors can now run the day-to-day site without changing layout code, while the defined application and release surface gives the delivery team a clearer system to maintain.