Case study Agency partner
Crux Design Agency
Development partner to a design led agency
62
Old pages mapped to a match
Not one rule to the homepage
65
Automated redirect tests
All passing, no intermediate hops
0.07s
Response on a redirect
The server never loads PHP
- Client
- Crux Design Agency
- Sector
- Design agency
- Services
- WordPress development, migration and performance
- Engagement
- Ongoing development partner
The partnership
Crux is a design led agency. They handle the brand and the design, and for the build they bring in a developer rather than carrying one on the payroll. That developer is me. The work goes out under their name, to their client, which is the arrangement and it suits both sides.
In practice that means fitting into someone else’s process rather than running my own. Their hosting, their client, their timelines, their sign off. It also means being the person they can hand the technical half of a project to and not have to check afterwards. The work has ranged from a full site build through to a page speed pass on Crux’s own site.
The build
The largest piece so far was a WordPress build for one of their clients, a specialist in temporary water management. A GeneratePress child theme with custom fields driving every editable area, so the agency could hand the client a site they could actually run.
It was then migrated off shared hosting onto Crux’s own server and taken live on the new domain, which is the unglamorous half of a launch and the half that goes wrong.
Retiring a brand without losing its search
The client had rebranded, so the old domain was being shut down and everything pointed at the new site. That is the moment most rebrands quietly throw away the search visibility they spent years building.
The quick version of that job is one rule sending every old address to the new homepage. It takes ten minutes and it discards the ranking of every individual page. Instead every URL on the old site was crawled and mapped to its closest match on the new one: the pages in the sitemap, the ones the sitemap had missed, and a few recovered from the Internet Archive that nothing linked to any more.
That came to sixty two explicit redirects, six pattern rules and a catch all for anything unforeseen, then a test suite run against the lot.
It runs as server rules rather than a WordPress plugin. The old site sat on PHP 7.3, where the usual redirect plugin will not even install, and rules at the server level answer in about seven hundredths of a second because the server never has to load PHP at all.
Every destination verified live, with no intermediate hop.
What clients say
In their words, not mine.
We use Aaron for development we would rather not hand to a junior. The work comes back the way it was specced, on the date he said, and it goes out under our name without us having to check it twice.
Aaron built our website and now looks after the search side of it, and it's the first time anyone's shown us numbers that mean something. Enquiries from people searching for the coatings we actually do, rather than our name, have roughly doubled in six months. He built a page for exhaust ceramic coating that ranks on its own, and every month we get a short report in plain English saying what changed and why. Straightforward to deal with, and he tells us when something isn't worth doing.
Aaron has been excellent to work with. His WordPress development skills are first class, with a strong understanding of both the technical side and the practical needs of a live e-commerce website. He works quickly, communicates clearly and, most importantly, knows how to diagnose and fix problems without making things unnecessarily complicated. We've used Aaron for a range of WordPress development work and I've always found him knowledgeable, reliable and easy to work with. Highly recommended for anyone looking for an experienced WordPress developer.
Aaron built our online shop from scratch and it was the first time the brand actually looked like us online. Every pair we sell is a one off and he built the shop around that, so people find the right size and condition quickly. He handled design and build end to end, sorted the pricing and VAT properly, and I can add new pairs and update the site myself without going back to him every time.
