From 16 disconnected systems to one powerful platform with zero disruption.

Are Media’s WordPress CMS consolidation transformed 16 disconnected systems into a single, scalable publishing platform with zero disruption. Are Media is Australia’s leading content company for women, reaching over 90 percent of the female population through trusted brands like The Australian Women’s Weekly, Marie Claire, and Better Homes and Gardens.

But rapid growth introduced technical debt and created operational friction. As a result, updates required manual rollouts across multiple codebases. The team repeated bug fixes in silos, and editorial teams lacked shared resources. This inefficiency showed that a full Are Media WordPress CMS consolidation was essential. Maintenance consumed development budgets, which left little room for innovation. Publishing slowed, became inconsistent, and struggled to scale. Each brand operated in isolation, so even simple changes turned into multi-week projects. Editors had to navigate complex systems instead of focusing on content. As a result, editors felt blocked, developers grew overwhelmed, and business goals fell out of sync with the tech stack.

How Are Media’s WordPress CMS Consolidation Enabled Editorial Efficiency

XWP worked with Are Media to build a shared, WordPress-based platform that not only met technical requirements but also solved the daily pain points of content production.

The new platform consolidated 16 disconnected systems into one shared codebase. XWP customized editorial workflows to improve flexibility and ease of use, while flexible design frameworks preserved each brand’s identity. Discovery sessions and hands-on training ensured editorial concerns guided development, with onboarding and documentation supporting long-term success. A shared component library meant improvements made for one brand could benefit all of them, and a phased migration approach kept every title live throughout the rollout.

By prioritizing editorial autonomy, XWP empowered editors to publish faster, collaborate more easily, and create better content at scale, all without disrupting operations. The result was a publishing environment that scaled with the business instead of slowing it down, freeing development resources to focus on innovation rather than maintenance.

Key Stats

“Before, we were always working around the tech. Now, the platform works for us.”

SENIOR EDITOR, ARE MEDIA

See how Are Media replaced 16 systems with one platform, with zero downtime and 50% faster publishing. Read the full case study to see how XWP delivered it.