Forensic content recovery
Historic content was recovered from a compromised Joomla installation before the rebuild began, protecting the archive instead of starting from scratch.
Dyfed Powys NARPO
a compromised archive, rescued and rebuilt.
A full recovery and bespoke WordPress rebuild for the Dyfed Powys branch of the National Association of Retired Police Officers, turning a malware-riddled 14-year-old Joomla site into a bilingual, accessible and much easier-to-manage platform.
The clientY cleient
A members' association carrying years of history on a site that had become impossible to trust.
Dyfed Powys NARPO supports retired police officers and their families across the region, balancing practical welfare information with a deep archive of local history, news, photography and member notices.
The previous website had been running on a 14-year-old Joomla build that had become badly compromised. It was riddled with malware, had been suspended for sending spam emails, and could no longer be treated as a safe or sustainable home for member information.
Structurally, the content had collapsed into long, difficult pages. News entries were dumped into a single archive page. Obituaries lived in a long HTML list. Galleries were hard to search and harder to maintain. The site contained valuable history, but very little of it was easy to find.
The brief was not just to redesign it. It was to recover what mattered, rebuild trust, protect the archive, and leave the committee with a site that could be updated without fear.
- Organisation
- Retired police officers' association
- Region
- Dyfed-Powys
- Old platform
- 14-year-old Joomla site
- Primary risk
- Malware, spam suspension, broken structure
- Need
- Recovery, accessibility, easier editing
The rebuildYr ailadeiladu
Before
After
Drag to compare the old homepage with the rebuild
A recovery project disguised as a redesign: secure, bilingual and built to last.
Before the new build could begin, the old site had to be treated like a rescue operation. Data was forensically retrieved from the compromised installation, including hundreds of historical images that would have been painful to lose.
From there, the site was rebuilt on a bespoke WordPress foundation with a far clearer structure, cleaner navigation and a much more professional feel for both members and administrators. The build is fully bilingual in English and Welsh, fully responsive across desktop, tablet and mobile, and designed with WCAG compliance in mind throughout.
Security and governance mattered just as much as presentation. The new site is secure, GDPR compliant and cookie compliant, with optimised media delivery and a much safer long-term platform underneath it.
And despite the extra functionality, the result scores 100 across Lighthouse for Performance, Accessibility, Best Practices and SEO , proof that clarity, accessibility and speed can all live in the same build.
The archive rescueYr archif
From long HTML dumps to searchable archives members can actually use.
The real win was not just the new interface. It was the content model underneath it. Historic material was split into structures that make sense, instead of being trapped inside endless scrolling pages.
Every legacy news entry was separated into its own news item, complete with images, filters and search. The new archive now holds 59 individual news posts, organised by category, tag and keyword instead of being buried in a single page.
The photo archive was rebuilt as a proper collection too. 765 historic photos were extracted and imported, then made filterable by category, tag and text search, with a full lightbox view for image details and metadata.
Obituaries were given the same treatment. Rather than one long list, the new section groups 310 notices by year inside dropdown accordions and makes names searchable. Newsletters were also regrouped by year for easy downloading, making older editions far easier to retrieve.
On top of that sits a cleaner member journey: a contact form, branded login and sign-up pages, and a simple admin option that lets the committee mark any page as members-only when needed.
FunctionalitySwyddogaethau
Six parts of the rebuild
Six parts of the rebuild
that turned a rescue into a proper platform.
Bilingual and accessible
The whole site now works in English and Welsh, is built with WCAG compliance in mind, and stays clear and usable across desktop, tablet and mobile.
News archive rebuilt
Legacy updates were split into individual news entries with their own pages, imagery, categories, tags and search, instead of living on one long archive page.
Searchable photo album
Hundreds of recovered images were turned into a filterable archive by category, tag and text search, with a dedicated lightbox view for image details.
Obituaries and newsletters reorganised
Obituaries are now grouped by year inside accordions and searchable by name, while newsletters are neatly arranged by year for straightforward downloading.
Members-only controls
A simple admin toggle can restrict any page for members, surface a label in navigation, and route people through branded login and sign-up screens instead of default WordPress auth.
What was achievedYr hyn a gyflawnwyd
Rescued, reorganised,
Rescued, reorganised,
and made future-proof.
A rebuild that did more than replace a design: it recovered vulnerable history, restructured it into a usable system, and left the organisation with a safer, clearer platform to run.
Lighthouse score
0
Performance, Accessibility, Best Practices and SEO all hit 100 on the rebuilt site.
All four categories
News posts extracted
0
Historic news was separated into individual entries, searchable and filterable instead of buried in one long page.
Structured archive
Photos imported
0
Recovered historical images now sit inside a searchable gallery with category, tag and lightbox detail views.
Recovered and indexed
Obituaries regrouped
0
Notices are now grouped by year inside accordions, searchable by name, and far easier for families and members to browse.
By year, not by sprawlFigures specific to this project, based on the rebuilt archive at the time of writing.
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