A decade of editorial moved into a model the writers designed
Ten years of travel journalism off a legacy CMS and into a content model its own writers helped shape.
Objective
Travel Secrets' archive was its asset and its constraint: valuable content locked in a CMS where every new format required a developer.
The team wanted to publish new formats without asking permission, and to keep every inbound link pointing somewhere sensible.
Solution
We ran the model design with the writers in the room rather than presenting one to them. Content is modelled as content, not as page layouts.
Migration was field-level, preserving relationships, media and metadata, with redirects verified before cutover.
The front end consumes the model with live preview, so publishing is seconds and drafts look like the real page.
Outcome
Writers publish and restructure without engineering, and new formats are a model change rather than a project.
The archive survived the move with its links and metadata intact.
What’s next
A newsletter surface reading the same model, and structured data for destination guides.
“We designed the model ourselves, which is why we actually use it.”Travel SecretsEditorial lead
