CMS development & support
WordPress and Umbraco sites built, rescued and upgraded by the developers who write the code.
63Digital builds, rescues and upgrades content-managed websites on WordPress and Umbraco. We've taken over WordPress sites from developers who went out of business, added federated search across WordPress and ServiceNow, and moved our own site from Umbraco 13 to 17 in one jump. The guides here are written from those jobs.
How to, from jobs we've done
How to reduce the size of a WordPress media library (safely)
The weight is usually in a small number of oversized original photos, not the thumbnails. Shrink those outside WordPress in a logged batch, capping the longest side at 2,560 pixels, saving JPGs at quality 82 and stripping hidden metadata, then swap them in and rebuild thumbnails. On one site that took 626 originals from 3 GB to under 700 MB.
How to take back your WordPress site when your developer has gone
If you can still log in to wp-admin as an administrator, you can recover the site without the old developer or host. Copy it to hosting in your own name with a migration plugin, find your domain's registrar with a WHOIS lookup and recover that account, then re-license only the premium plugins the site really uses, in the business's name.
How to upgrade Umbraco 13 to 17
You can upgrade Umbraco 13 straight to 17 in one jump: update to the latest 13, confirm every package has a version for 17, move to .NET 10, update Umbraco and let it upgrade the database on first start. That part is quick. The time goes on packages without a 17 release and on custom code relying on removed features.
Stuck with a CMS that's fighting you?
Tell us what's broken or what you need next. We'll give you a straight answer on whether to fix it, upgrade it or rebuild it.