September was packed with creativity, learning and team spirit here at Fanatic. From pizza tossing antics and AI deep dives to mentoring local students, we’ve squeezed plenty into the studio calendar. We also headed to London for an AI panel, launched a fresh website for RA Sushi, and welcomed a new team member. Add in a wedding, some impressive out-of-office adventures, and the usual buzz: it’s been anything but quiet!
This platform also ties into our wider commitment to making reporting more meaningful. Just as we’ve developed our own Accessibility Reporting tools to help clients measure and improve digital accessibility, the health check dashboard makes ongoing performance monitoring seamless and actionable.
We’re excited to keep developing features that don’t just provide data, but make it easy for clients to understand what’s happening with their websites and what steps to take next.
The development team have been tackling an interesting challenge this month – integrating WordPress with Laravel to get the best of both worlds for a client project. The brief was to solve some performance issues with a membership site that handles events and ticketing through a third-party CRM system.
The original setup was causing delays because everything happened synchronously – every user action triggered immediate communication with the CRM, which created bottlenecks and potential failure points. Our solution? Using Acorn by Roots to leverage Laravel’s power and flexibility alongside WordPress’s familiar content management. This lets us handle the CRM integration asynchronously, using queues and custom commands to make everything much more robust and efficient. It’s a great example of how combining the right tools can solve complex problems whilst keeping things manageable for clients.