Joomla-to-HubSpot Website Migration for a Multi-Brand Aged Care Charity
A charity running an aged-care network and a sibling dementia-care brand needed to move off a Joomla CMS site that couldn't support a growing family of brands, a donation commerce experience, or a way to search its own network of care facilities. We rebuilt both sites on HubSpot together, and added a Shopify-linked donation shop and a Locations Database/finder module. The domain then moved over on a scheduled DNS change, with a rollback window already agreed with the registrar in case the transfer failed midway.
Executive Summary
Context
The organisation's public website ran on a Joomla CMS site that it had carried since a 2018 platform migration. It had no donation commerce and no way to search its own network of care facilities. A sibling dementia-care brand needed the same rebuild on the same timeline, and the domain cutover needed a rollback plan that the registrar could act on if anything went wrong.
What We Built
We rebuilt the organisation's website and a sibling dementia-care brand's website on HubSpot in place of Joomla CMS. The rebuild added a Shopify-linked donation shop, a Locations Database/finder module across the care-facility network, and HubSpot-native forms for Palliative Care, Bereavement Support and Referrals. We then cut the domain over on a scheduled CNAME change, with a rollback buffer pre-agreed with the registrar.
Tech Stack
- HubSpot, Shopify, Joomla CMS, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, SEMrush, Moz
Not a fit if you don't control your own domain or DNS record, since a scheduled cutover like this depends on securing a pre-agreed rollback window directly with your registrar's support team. It's also not a fit if you operate a single, standalone brand. This rebuild's value came from launching two sibling sites on one shared platform at once, not from relaunching one site alone.
The Challenge
The organisation's public website ran on Joomla CMS, a platform it had carried since a 2018 migration from Adobe Business Catalyst. Neither Joomla nor the systems built around it could support the growing family of brands the organisation now operated. The site didn't have donation commerce, and families couldn't search the organisation's network of care facilities by location. A sibling dementia-care brand needed the same rebuild at the same time, so the cutover had to move two sites onto one new platform together.
Moving the domain carried its own risk. DNS propagation isn't instant, so any cutover would leave a window where a visitor could land on the old site, the new one, or neither. We needed to plan for that window in advance instead of discovering it during the transfer.
Our Approach
A lift-and-shift of the Joomla site was never an option once the donation shop and locations finder were in scope, because neither existed on the old platform to move. So we rebuilt the organisation's site and its sibling dementia-care brand's site as one HubSpot-hosted platform. The rebuild added a Shopify-linked donation shop, a Locations Database/finder module across the care-facility network, and HubSpot-native forms for Palliative Care, Bereavement Support and Referrals. We archived Joomla CMS and its Google Analytics history before decommissioning the old platform, so the site's prior performance record carried forward instead of disappearing at cutover.
The cutover ran on a scheduled CNAME update to the organisation's primary domain, set for 3:00pm EST on 30 November 2022, with the new homepage confirmed live by 5:32pm EST. DNS propagation isn't instant, so a per-page 'under construction' or 404 fallback could show during the roughly two-and-a-half-hour propagation window. We pre-agreed a 48-hour rollback buffer with the registrar's support team beforehand.
We accepted brief, sub-five-minute per-page unavailability as the cost of a same-day cutover. Delaying the launch wouldn't have bought a guarantee that neither Joomla nor the registrar could deliver.
Impact
A same-day domain cutover ran with a rollback window already agreed
The scheduled CNAME update to the organisation's primary domain went live at 3:00pm EST on 30 November 2022, and the new HubSpot-hosted homepage was confirmed live by 5:32pm EST. So the organisation moved off Joomla CMS in a single afternoon, not over a staged, multi-week transfer. A 48-hour rollback buffer had been pre-agreed with the domain registrar's support team before the change went out, which meant the cutover could have been reversed on short notice if the new site had failed to resolve.
A donation shop now runs on the same platform as the site
The rebuilt site added a Shopify-linked donation shop where none existed on the old Joomla platform, so a donor can now give without leaving the organisation's site or its sibling brand's site for a separate system. HubSpot-native forms for Palliative Care, Bereavement Support and Referrals sit alongside it on the same platform, so the forms and the donation experience share one CMS instead of being stitched across two.
Families can search the organisation's own facility network from the site
A HubSpot-hosted Locations Database/finder module now lets a visitor search the organisation's residential care, home care and dementia-care facilities directly from the site, which the Joomla platform never supported. The module covers the same care-facility network across the sibling brands, so one search covers all of them instead of each brand answering the question on its own.
The site's SEO position moved with it, not against it
Before the cutover, the organisation's own KPI scorecard recorded roughly 40,000 monthly site users, 7,623 backlinks and a Domain Authority of 41, with more than 5,900 keywords ranking in the top 50. We archived the Google Analytics history and the Joomla CMS record before decommissioning the old platform, so that position carried forward as a comparison point on the new HubSpot site instead of being lost at cutover.
The rebuilt site linked a Shopify storefront for donations directly into the new HubSpot-hosted site, which the Joomla platform had no path to support. A donor can now complete a gift on the same domain as the rest of the site, instead of being routed to a separate, disconnected checkout.
A HubSpot-hosted Locations Database/finder module covers the organisation's residential care, home care and dementia-care facility network, so a visitor can search its locations from the site itself. The Joomla site didn't offer anything like it, and the facility list previously had no dedicated, searchable home on the public site.
The domain moved on a single scheduled CNAME update to the organisation's primary domain record, set for 3:00pm EST on 30 November 2022, with the new homepage confirmed live by 5:32pm EST. We agreed a 48-hour rollback buffer with the domain registrar's support team ahead of time. A per-page 'under construction' or 404 fallback could show while the roughly two-and-a-half-hour propagation window ran.
We archived Joomla CMS and the site's Google Analytics history before decommissioning the old platform, not after. So the record of the site's prior SEO position and traffic history carried forward into the new HubSpot site instead of disappearing at cutover.
The organisation's Joomla CMS site moved to HubSpot through a scheduled CNAME update at 3:00pm EST on 30 November 2022. DNS propagation took about two and a half hours, and each page could show an under-construction or 404 fallback while it transferred, with the new homepage live by 5:32pm EST. Before the change, we agreed a 48-hour rollback buffer with the registrar, so the domain could revert to Joomla if the new site failed to resolve.
FAQ
Joomla CMS had no path to the Shopify-linked donation commerce or the Locations Database/finder module the organisation needed, and it couldn't support the growing family of sibling brands sharing one web presence. Rebuilding on HubSpot let the organisation's site and its sibling dementia-care brand's site launch on one platform with those capabilities built in, instead of bolting them onto a CMS that couldn't carry them.
We agreed a 48-hour rollback buffer with the domain registrar's support team before the CNAME change went out, so the old site could be restored on short notice if the new one failed to resolve. DNS propagation isn't instant, so we accepted a per-page 'under construction' or 404 fallback, for under five minutes per page, during the transfer instead of designing around it entirely.
