Keeping your website updated isn’t just polite practice—it’s an essential act. Regular updates improve security, stability, and performance; they also tend to enhance the feature set and increase usability. You’ll reduce unplanned costs and the hard-to-measure frustrations that come from outdated software. For content-driven sites, an up-to-date CMS makes it easier to create, edit and manage content, so you can focus on serving your audience with less friction.
Adventurers and travel experts, John and Victoria Derrick are a husband-and-wife team who help millions of travellers each year plan the perfect trip to top U.S. destinations. Their flagship site, Guide of US, delivers personalized travel advice, vacation and recommendations for attractions, accommodations, and activities in trending destinations around the United States, like Hawaii, San Francisco, Napa Valley, and Los Angeles.
What began as a single site in 2000 has grown into a family of three: the original Guide of US, a dedicated Hawaii travel site, and a gardening tips and advice site. Each contains dynamic, ever-expanding content that needs a robust, reliable CMS to support it.
In 2020, the Derricks came to Hop Studios looking to upgrade their ExpressionEngine CMS. Though John is a highly knowledgeable tech fellow, all three sites were still running on EE2, as he had been stuck in place for several years. Outdated software comes with legitimate risks: security vulnerabilities, outdated add-ons that become incompatible with new ones, poorer usability, and sluggish response times—all of which can impact both the user experience and the editor’s ability to manage content.
As a leading ExpressionEngine expert, Hop Studios was ready to help. We made a plan and executed it to upgrade all three sites to EE6, which brought significant improvements in performance, functionality, and ease of use. The latest EE versions included more native features, some of which replaced the need for third-party add-ons. During the upgrade, we removed outdated and unnecessary add-ons to streamline the CMS and further boost performance and functionality. Fewer add-ons—less to maintain in the future.
We worked closely with John, the team’s in-house tech expert, involving him throughout the process. This gave him the opportunity to learn the new software, ask questions, and gain him extra confidence in managing the updated system. We enjoy educating our clients so they can independently update their sites both with fresh content and with simple technical improvements, and ExpressionEngine’s improved back-end makes that easier than ever. (But of course, we can give you the long-term, white glove treatment too, if that’s what you prefer.)
We’re so pleased to support John and Victoria as they continue inspiring travellers and gardeners with their expert tips. If you’re planning a trip around the U.S. or looking for some gardening advice, we highly recommend visiting their sites.
Is your CMS holding you back? Get in touch and let’s plan an upgrade that makes managing your site simpler and smarter.
