OakNorth Bank · Platform reliability and CMS
Digital Platform Modernisation
Stabilising a fragile banking website and making content safer for more people to manage.
- Client
- OakNorth Bank
- My role
- Owned the technical modernisation, working with engineering, marketing, legal and compliance.
Context
OakNorth's customer-facing banking website is operated in a regulated environment, with marketing, legal and compliance teams all involved in what gets published.
The problem
The legacy site had reliability, performance and operational maintainability challenges. Content changes depended heavily on a small number of technical users.
Constraints and complexity
- A regulated environment with legal and compliance review.
- A fragile WordPress platform that had to stay live while it improved.
- Public content to be exposed through APIs while non-public content stayed restricted.
My role and ownership
What I owned
- Technical modernisation of the platform
- Performance improvements and safer operational processes
- Automated Cypress monitoring against the live site
- The PHP and Twig component architecture and structured CMS approach
- Foundations for a future Next.js migration
The wider team. Worked with engineering, marketing, legal and compliance stakeholders.
The approach
The work addressed two linked problems: stabilising the platform, and structuring content so it could be managed without relying on a few technical people.
Technical decisions
- 01
Monitor the live site
Automated Cypress monitoring against the live website catches problems in production rather than waiting for a report.
- 02
Components plus structured content
A reusable PHP and Twig component library, with structured content in ACF, lets teams manage and review pages with less developer involvement.
- 03
Expose only appropriate content
REST APIs expose appropriate public content while keeping non-public content restricted.
- 04
Foundations, not a big-bang migration
The work established foundations for a future Next.js migration. A full migration was not part of this project.
Implementation
- WordPress, PHP, Twig and ACF for the component and content architecture, with Storybook.
- Cypress for automated monitoring of the live website, and REST APIs for public content.
- WordPress
- PHP
- Twig
- ACF
- REST APIs
- Storybook
- Cypress
- Next.js foundations
Outcome and impact
~1 year
Without a production incident, alongside platform reliability improvements.
- Approximately one year without a production incident, alongside the platform reliability improvements.
- Page delivery time reduced from approximately two weeks to one week.
- Improved content management and maintainability, with marketing, legal and compliance teams able to manage and review content more independently.
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