PAL are a UK‑wide equipment and site‑setup provider offering more than 30,000 products through a network of over 1,500 suppliers and 10,000 depots. Founded in 2006, the company has grown from a family‑run skip‑hire business into a nationwide one‑stop solution for construction plant hire, welfare units, site accommodation, lighting, generators, barriers, waste management, and event equipment.
PAL approached Bro to improve their aged WordPress website’s stability, performance, and maintainability, as the existing build was showing its age and generating recurring PHP errors. This project required a level of precision and technical depth that aligned perfectly with our expertise in custom WordPress development.
The primary objective was to upgrade the website from PHP 7.4 to PHP 8.3, resolve all existing and resulting compatibility issues, streamline the plugin ecosystem to reduce unnecessary overhead, address theme and plugin conflicts, bring previously non‑editable content fully into the CMS, and improve the mobile experience.
They needed a cleaner, more efficient website with improved performance, reduced maintenance demands, and greater flexibility for future updates.
The theme and plugins were audited, deprecated functions identified, and existing compatibility issues resolved. The result is a cleaner, more efficient codebase that runs faster and aligns fully with current hosting requirements. A suite of bespoke features was also developed to replace ten separate plugins, each of which had been adding unnecessary weight, duplicating functionality, or relying on outdated code.
The mobile experience was reworked to meet modern usability expectations, and faster load times now contribute to stronger Core Web Vitals and improved search engine visibility. Error logs are clean, unexpected behaviour has been eliminated, and the overall system is significantly more resilient. Whether at the WordPress core, theme, or server level, future updates can now be applied with confidence.
Fantastic experience with Pete and Allen at Bro Design. They were thorough and detailed, taking time to understand our requirements. They saw the project through to completion and followed-up afterwards to ensure everything was working properly. 100% recommended for any website development, upgrade or UX work.
Whether you need a fresh brand identity or a new website, we’d love to hear about your project.
