Case Study - Securing a neglected WordPress site and automating gate access

The Challenge

Chester Dog Park is a secure, private dog exercise field where customers book a slot online and let themselves in for some uninterrupted time with their dogs. When they came to us, the digital side of the business was working against them.

Their WordPress website had been handed over in a state of disrepair: plugins were badly out of date and the site had been left with serious security vulnerabilities. On top of that, they were stuck with a hosting provider that offered little in the way of support or guidance, and their email and domain were tangled up in the same neglected setup.

They needed a single partner to take responsibility for the whole picture—hosting, domain, email, security and the booking experience—and get everything back to a place they could rely on.

What We Did

A managed move to better hosting

We migrated the website away from their old provider onto Flywheel, a managed hosting platform purpose-built for WordPress. That gave the site a faster, more stable foundation with proper backups and a support setup actually suited to how their business runs—rather than a generic host that left them to fend for themselves.

Locking down the site’s security

Before anything else, we carried out a full security audit of the site. We reviewed the WordPress installation, identified the weaknesses that had left it exposed, and brought everything back to a clean, secure state. We then closed those gaps for good—updating and hardening the site so it stays protected, and putting it on a footing where it’s actively maintained rather than drifting back into neglect.

Professional email with Microsoft 365

We set the team up with Microsoft 365 accounts so their email runs from their own domain name. Instead of relying on a generic mailbox, every message now comes from a professional Chester Dog Park address—better for trust, deliverability and day-to-day running of the business.

Taking control of the domain and DNS

We moved their domain over to Cloudflare, our own preferred provider, and now manage the DNS and wider domain configuration on their behalf. That means changes are handled quickly and correctly by us, with the performance and security benefits Cloudflare brings, and one less thing for the owners to worry about.

A custom plugin for secure gate access

The standout piece of work was a bespoke plugin we built from scratch to handle gate access. Chester Dog Park controls entry with a code-operated gate, and that code needs to rotate regularly for security—while still reaching every genuine customer who has booked.

We built a system that ties into their Amelia booking setup so that when a customer books, they’re automatically sent the access code they’ll need for their visit by email. The code changes on a regular cycle, and the whole process is automated—no manual sending, no shared code floating around, and access tied to real bookings.

For obvious reasons we won’t detail how the rotation and delivery work under the hood, but the outcome is simple: secure, automatic gate access that the owners no longer have to think about.

The Result

Chester Dog Park now has a setup that works for them instead of against them: a clean, secure, well-hosted WordPress site, professional email on their own domain, properly managed DNS, and an automated gate-access system that quietly does its job every time someone books.

There were no vanity metrics to chase here—just a business that was being let down by its previous setup, and is now in safe hands and very happy with the result. We continue to support them across hosting, domain, email and security.

Services Provided