The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) is a UK registered Charity for the conservation of birds and nature, registered in England, Wales, and Scotland. The organization promotes conservation and environmental protection through public awareness campaigns, petitions, and the management of nature reserves across the United Kingdom. With almost 1.2m members, including 190,000+ youth members, and responsibility for over 200 nature reserves, the RSPB is one of the largest wildlife conservation organizations in the world.

The RSPB carried out a CMS migration and website redesign to enhance its digital capabilities and provide a better experience to its users, the conservation community, and to maximise opportunities to generate revenue through the promotion of membership and donations.

CMS migration and maintenance

A primary goal of this project was to execute a CMS migration from its previous legacy platform to a modern solution using Magnolia DXP on a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) infrastructure.  

"By modernizing the website, we’re making it easier for us to engage with people and help them connect with nature, to take action for wildlife, and promote our conservation aims where most needed."

– John Benfield, Product Owner Website

PRODYNA chose the PaaS solution because it abstracts infrastructure management, simplifies application development, and offers built-in scalability. By adopting a headless CMS approach, we decoupled content management from data representation, providing greater flexibility.

Our role included:

• Evaluating the feasibility of migration.
• Assisting in-house software architects with the technical solution and participating in requirements gathering with stakeholders.
• Planning, implementing, and testing various content apps used across the RSPB ecosystem.
• Managing CI/CD pipelines hosted on GitHub Actions to ensure smooth deployment and continuous integration.

Website redesign services

The RSPB required a complete website redesign to enhance its design, performance, and SEO. The goal for PRODYNA was to deliver a mobile-first, responsive, and accessible website that adheres to industry standards.

Thanks to the headless, microservices-based architecture, we rewrote the front-end component using Angular and deployed it to Azure Web Apps. Content and components are delivered through RESTful APIs, fetching data from the CMS and third-party providers. We stored UI components in a Chromatic storybook design library to maintain consistency.

Process optimization and CI/CD integration

We built automated systems to speed up how the RSPB updates its website and software. This lets it quickly push out changes to its CMS, the site's look, and the underlying services. We also used Azure's API Gateway and Front Door to make sure everything runs smoothly and reliably. And, of course, we put strong security measures in place with Azure's Web Application Firewall.

Challenges

• Hard deadline: The migration had to be completed before the Contract renewal for our existing architecture.
• Optimized content editor experience: We streamlined the Magnolia DXP editor experience while maintaining structured yet flexible content layouts.
• Distributed system communication: With multiple teams involved, we established team-wide refinement meetings and communication channels to coordinate system updates efficiently.

Solution - Magnolia DXP

The RSPB's new digital experience, powered by Magnolia DXP, lives in a scalable, cloud-native environment. We streamlined user logins with Microsoft Entra SSO. Secure RESTful APIs deliver content, while a microservices layer acts as a data pipeline, bringing together information from the CMS and external sources.

The front end is an intuitive Angular application that pulls data through the Azure API Gateway. We packaged all components – CMS, services, and front-end – in Docker containers, stored in Azure Container Registry, and automated updates using GitHub Actions.

"A thriving world for birds starts with awareness and action. Our new website, a comprehensive digital platform, is helping inspire more people to protect the places and species that make nature special."

– John Benfield, Product Owner Website

The RSPB's recent CMS migration and website redesign weren't just about looks but about building a solid foundation for future developments. Now, it has a system that's easier to manage and a website that makes it a breeze for people to learn about and support the charity’s conservation work.