Bedrock foundations keep Yorkshire Food Guide serving up results

Yorkshire Food Guide is Yorkshire's go-to online platform for discovering the best places to eat, drink and socialise across the county.

The site connects food lovers with hundreds of restaurants, cafes, bars and pubs, featuring reviews, guides and curated recommendations that help people find their next great meal out.

With a busy ecommerce element built on WooCommerce and thousands of visitors relying on the site daily, Yorkshire Food Guide needs rock-solid performance and security to keep serving its growing community.

Like many established WordPress sites, Yorkshire Food Guide had evolved over the years with custom functionality added to meet business needs. This bespoke development had served the site well, but it also meant updates to WordPress and WooCommerce needed careful handling to avoid disrupting those customisations.

The site had reached a point where it was ready for a technical refresh. The underlying platform needed modernising to take advantage of the latest performance improvements, security features and functionality that newer versions of WordPress and WooCommerce offer.

The goal was clear: bring the technical foundations up to date while keeping the familiar front-end experience that visitors and the Yorkshire Food Guide team had come to rely on.

After conducting a thorough technical audit, the Ascensor development team mapped out a modernisation plan. This wasn't a surface-level update; it required a complete technical overhaul to set the site up for the future.

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Modernising the platform

We rebuilt the site’s technical foundations using a secure, industry-standard structure.

• Migrated the site to a more robust server setup to improve reliability.
• Introduced Bedrock, a modern WordPress framework that brings better security, cleaner organisation and easier maintenance.
• Moved all custom code into a dedicated plugin, separating it from WordPress core files. This means future updates can be applied safely without risking the site's bespoke functionality.

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Improving performance

We streamlined the platform and removed legacy elements that were no longer needed.

• Upgraded to modern versions of WordPress, PHP and WooCommerce for better speed, stability and long-term support.
• Cleaned up unnecessary files, code and database entries to reduce load.
• Improved caching and server configuration to make pages load faster.

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Strengthening security

We introduced improvements designed to keep the site protected and give the team peace of mind.

• Applied current security best practices across WordPress and server settings.
• Tightened configuration to follow modern standards.
• Enabled smoother update management so the site can stay current without risk.

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Creating a better checkout experience

Upgrading WooCommerce meant the checkout and basket flows could be refreshed, giving customers a cleaner, more reliable buying journey with small refinements to the front-end design.

Throughout the project, we kept changes to the visible website experience minimal so users weren't disrupted, while completely modernising the platform underneath.

To visitors, Yorkshire Food Guide looks and works almost exactly the same as it always did. And that's exactly the point.

The difference is what's happening behind the scenes. The site now sits on more robust server infrastructure with improved reliability.

Updates can be applied quickly and safely, which means Yorkshire Food Guide has access to the latest features and security patches from plugins they've been using for years.

The WooCommerce upgrade has streamlined the checkout process, making it easier for customers to complete purchases.

And most importantly, the site is now positioned for growth, with a modern, maintainable foundation ready to support the business for years to come.

This project gave Yorkshire Food Guide exactly what they needed: a refreshed platform, stronger security and a foundation built for the future.