As businesses grow, websites often accumulate years of content, custom functionality, integrations, and publishing processes that make modernization considerably more complex than simply launching a new design. That was the challenge behind the modernization of the digital platform for Graton Resort & Casino, a major hospitality and entertainment destination in Northern California. The project required rebuilding the website and CMS architecture while migrating a large existing content ecosystem, preserving critical SEO value, and creating a more maintainable foundation for ongoing marketing operations.
Resort & Casino
Hospitality & Entertainment
This work was performed by Solorio Designs founder Jose Solorio as part of his full-time development role with Graton Resort & Casino. It is presented here to demonstrate the enterprise-scale digital architecture and modernization experience behind Solorio Designs.
The website had grown alongside the organization.
Over time, that meant managing hundreds of pages, thousands of media assets, multiple custom content types, marketing content, restaurants, entertainment, promotions, and other information across a large customer-facing digital experience.
Modernizing a platform at this scale introduces a different problem than building a new website from scratch:
How do you improve the system without losing everything the existing website has already built?
The migration needed to account for existing content, URLs, search visibility, metadata, media, structured data models, redirects, and ongoing marketing requirements while giving the organization a stronger platform for the future.
The modernization included rebuilding both the customer-facing website and the content-management foundation supporting it.
The CMS was restructured around reusable content models and components rather than treating every page as an isolated build. This created a more structured foundation for managing a large and evolving website while giving Marketing greater flexibility to publish and maintain content.
Approximately 200+ pages, 10+ custom content types, and thousands of images and media assets had to move into the new experience. The migration included preserving and restructuring existing content and data models rather than simply rebuilding a collection of static pages.
The organization also moved from gratonresortcasino.com to graton.com. Existing SEO titles, descriptions, and URLs were preserved where appropriate. When the information architecture intentionally changed, permanent redirects were implemented to help preserve continuity between old and new destinations. A new sitemap was also submitted to help search engines discover and understand the new domain and website structure.
Reusable components and structured CMS fields created a more maintainable publishing system for an organization whose website changes continuously. Instead of treating every new page or content requirement as a one-off development project, the platform provides a stronger foundation for ongoing digital operations.
The CMS architecture also supports a broader principle increasingly important to established organizations: Content should not have to be recreated every time it appears in another digital experience. Structured CMS data can serve as a source of truth that other experiences, including mobile applications and connected digital systems, can consume. That reduces duplicated data entry, lowers the risk of inconsistent information, and creates a foundation for managing content across multiple customer touchpoints.
The organization moved from a legacy digital platform to a modernized website and CMS foundation capable of supporting a large, continually changing hospitality and entertainment operation.
Enterprise website modernization isn’t simply a redesign.
The visible interface is only one layer.
Underneath it are years of content, URLs, search equity, media, data models, integrations, publishing workflows, and business processes that still need to work when the new experience goes live.
Successful modernization requires understanding both sides: what customers experience on the front end and what the organization needs behind it to operate the website effectively.
That combination of customer experience, development, CMS architecture, migration planning, integrations, analytics, and ongoing digital operations is part of the enterprise experience behind Solorio Designs.
When your organization has outgrown more than the appearance of its website, the modernization strategy needs to go deeper than the design.
Tell us what has changed, what is no longer working, and what the business needs to accomplish next.
During a 30-minute strategy call, we’ll discuss your situation and help determine the right starting point. You do not need to arrive with a technical specification.
Request a Strategy Call →
5.0 client rating • Based in Santa Rosa • Serving the Bay area and beyond