We migrate organisations off legacy CMS platforms onto headless Plone Volto. The reasons most clients come to us: editor pain, hosting cost, accessibility debt, brand-design changes that the old CMS won't let through. We've been doing these migrations since 2003.
Decoupling the editor from the frontend means designers can ship visual changes without breaking content workflow. It means a single CMS can serve a website, a mobile app, an internal portal and an AI search index from the same source. It means CDN-fronted pages load fast everywhere. The headless trade-off is more moving parts, which is exactly the part we take off your hands.
Plone is the most mature open-source CMS for organisations that take governance seriously: workflow, permissions, audit log, content versioning, multi-language and accessibility are first-class — not addons. Volto is the React frontend that turns Plone into a headless CMS with a modern visual editor.
We're long-time Plone core contributors. Dylan Jay (PretaGov co-founder and CTO) has been a Plone committer since 2005. We've shipped 9 PRs into volto-form-block alone, plus contributions to volto-grid-block, the section variation pattern, slots-lite, and the listing variations system. When something in the platform doesn't fit, we fix it upstream rather than around it.
We've implemented the full NSW Digital Design System in Plone 6 / Volto. 16 theme components shadowed. 25 manage components shadowed. 14 addon shadows including volto-form-block, volto-grid-block, and volto-accordion-block. Working demo at digitalnsw.pretagov.com.au. Open source kit at github.com/pretagov/nsw-design-system-plone6-kit.
The point of the reference build: every NSW agency that wants a compliant headless site can start from a working implementation rather than read the spec and hope. Same pattern works for GDS (UK Government Design System) and a couple of state-government design systems we've adapted.
Transform your digital presence with a headless open source CMS that grows with you. Contact us now to get started.
The NSW Swimming Pool Act was enacted to enforce the registration, inspection, and certification of pools to ensure their safety. The NSW Fair Trading faced the challenge of implementing a pool registration (extranet) system within a short timeframe, while ensuring cost-effectiveness and compliance with data protection laws.
The UK Land Registry's 1862 Register — 162GB of historical archival images and metadata — faced outdated tech, security risks, and non-compliance with WCAG 2.2 standards. We delivered a secure, accessible, future-proof upgrade using headless open-source technology.
Law Enforcement Conduct Commision and NSW Crime Commission both need highly secure fast public sites complaint to the NSW Digital Design system and Independent branding guidelines. Plone Volto was an excellent fit being easy to edit, visual and highly secure.
Multilingual public-facing platform for NSW Health's translation publishing service — Elasticsearch-powered search across content in 60+ languages, single source of truth across translations.
Long-running partnership with the NSW oversight body for police misconduct — hosting, Plone CMS upgrades, and the 2022 rebuild onto the NSW Customer Service design system.
Custom assessment-and-publication application for the MSC's certified fisheries — separate from the public MSC website, built and supported since 2016.
