Cushy CMS to WordPress CMS Conversion

Dumas Bay retreat center screenshot

Client: Dumas Bay Centre

Scope of Work
Accessibility Improvements
Copyediting and content migration
Front-End web development
Performance optimization
Security hardening
Search engine optimization
Visual redesign

Team: Cipalla Communications, Scott Marlow, Joan van den Berg

Dumas Bay Centre is a unique event & retreat venue owned by the City of Federal Way.

Before the website redesign, center staff were limited to editing existing website content using Cushy CMS, a WYSIWYG HTML editing tool. To add new content, city IT staff needed to upload files to the web host.

The website was migrated to a new host and WordPress was configured to allow full rich-content editing. The new mobile-friendly site features a more modern look, with image galleries, oEmbed video support, site search, SSL protection, and feedback and rental inquiry forms. All implemented with accessibility in mind.

Performance Metrics

Performance WordPress Site Benchmark
Google Mobile Speed: 68
Google Desktop Speed 81
Pingdom 87 faster than 87% of tested sites
WebPageTest Speed Index 1,017 median = ~4,493
top 10% = <1,388
YSlow 81 average score = 70
Web Page Size 526 Kb In 2017, average page size = ~2.4 Mb
median page size = ~1.9 Mb
Web Server Requests 27 < 40 – 60 recommended