Tech City UK Gets Agility Boost With WP Engine

We recently caught up with Ryan Procter of Tech City UK to talk about his organisation and how it uses WP Engine. Here’s part of that conversation.

Hi Ryan, thanks for taking the time to speak with us! Can you start with a quick introduction to yourself and your company?

My name is Ryan Procter; I work on Digital Communications for Tech City UK. We’re a government-funded organisation that aims to make the UK the best place to start and grow a digital business. We do this in three ways:

• Dedicated programmes such as Digital Business Academy (very early-stage), Upscale (Stage A) and Future Fifty (later-stage)
• Policy convening and providing the digital business community with a feedback loop to the heart of government
• Promotion of the UK digital ecosystem both in the UK and abroad through events, partnerships, and Tech Nation

Can you tell us about the types of challenges you faced when you first set-up your website?

When I joined Tech City UK a London-based development agency managed our website under our guidance, and we hosted our site via a US-based cloud computing company. Due to the speed at which the tech industry moves, we needed to be much more agile with the information we provide for the tech community and with the usability of the site.

We decided to migrate our site to WordPress to allow for constant iteration. When WP Engine got in touch it made a lot of sense to work with them –they have an EMEA presence and a team of experts that can provide 24/7 support. In addition, WP Engine’s platform allows for more customisation and makes the development, testing, and deployment quick, simple, and cost-effective.

Has this change lived up to your expectations, and what benefits has it brought to your company?

The change has definitely lived up to our expectations, and we’re now much more agile in our approach to site development. Using WP Engine also ensures that when new programmes are launched, we’ve got much more synchronisation across each of the respective websites.

WP Engine provides a staging site for pre-launch development, which makes it simple for feedback and iteration without affecting anything that is already live. Once the development is finalised, the WP Engine team is always on hand to assist. WP Engine also offers a number of easy-to-use guides, which makes it simple for digital entrepreneurs to launch their new products.

Would you recommend WP Engine to others in your industry?

For digital businesses that use WordPress, WP Engine really is tailored to make their lives as easy as possible. We’ve now got an array of programmes designed to help UK tech companies at every stage. For the programmes which have a website on WP Engine, the platform makes it very simple for us to develop and synchronise the organisation as a whole.

Want to read more stories from WP Engine customers? Each weekday in November we’ll unveil a new customer story as part of our WP Engine Customer Spotlight series.