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CASE STUDY · WORDPRESS · AWS · GOVERNMENT

Building a Scalable Cloud Platform for a High-Traffic Public Website

Boulder County needed to move from an on-premises SharePoint environment to a more flexible, scalable, and cost-effective cloud platform. We helped migrate their large public website to WordPress on AWS, creating a reliable infrastructure designed to handle public-sector traffic, long-term growth, and ongoing content needs.

The Challenge

A large government website needed a more scalable, modern platform

Boulder County’s website was previously hosted on an on-premises Microsoft SharePoint environment. The county wanted to move to the cloud and transition to an open-source content management system that would be easier to manage, more flexible for content editors, and better prepared for future growth.

The migration involved a large amount of content across many departments, along with the technical challenge of creating a secure, scalable AWS hosting environment for a high-traffic public website.

  • The existing site was hosted on-premises and needed to move to the cloud
  • Content had to be migrated from SharePoint into WordPress across many departments
  • The new platform needed to support a large public-sector website with high reliability
  • Content editors needed tools, templates, and training to manage pages more effectively
  • The hosting environment needed to scale during traffic spikes without unnecessary ongoing costs
  • The migration needed to stay organized while old and new versions of the site were maintained in parallel

What We Did

A cloud-hosted WordPress platform designed for reliability, scale, and efficiency

  • Migrated Boulder County from an on-premises SharePoint environment to WordPress
  • Created a structured content migration process with page statuses and department-level tracking
  • Programmatically scraped content from the old site to give editors a starting point in the new platform
  • Built WordPress templates and editor tools to make content creation easier and more consistent
  • Created a migration dashboard to track progress across departments and keep the project moving
  • Set up WordPress on AWS using Elastic Beanstalk, load-balanced ephemeral servers, and CI/CD deployment workflows
  • Used CDN delivery for static assets including images, CSS, and JavaScript
  • Configured AWS services to support performance, scalability, and long-term reliability
  • Helped Boulder County evaluate AWS commercial cloud versus GovCloud and select the best-fit option
  • Recommended infrastructure improvements over time as newer AWS tools became available
  • Helped establish reserved instances to reduce hosting costs compared with on-demand pricing
  • Provided long-term AWS support and maintenance for the platform
The AWS architecture supports a scalable WordPress environment with load balancing, CDN delivery, and reliable deployment workflows.

Before & After

Boulder County moved from an on-premises SharePoint environment to a scalable WordPress platform hosted in the AWS cloud.

Before
After

The Result

A stable, scalable platform supporting millions of public website visits

The website moved from on-premises hosting to a scalable AWS cloud environment

The platform supported approximately 6.5 million page views in 2025

The site has had virtually zero downtime

Reserved AWS instances helped reduce web hosting costs by approximately 50–60%

The county gained a more flexible WordPress content management system

The platform has supported nearly a decade of ongoing maintenance, improvements, and growth

The success of the setup helped inform similar cloud migrations for related public-sector websites

Key Takeaway

A successful cloud migration is not just about moving a website to new hosting. It requires the right architecture, a realistic content migration process, cost-conscious infrastructure planning, and long-term support as technology evolves.

This project helped Boulder County move to a scalable AWS WordPress platform that has remained reliable, efficient, and adaptable over time.

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