The leak
A rebuild that couldn’t break billing.
The risk wasn’t a slow site. It was asking every paying member to enter a card again.
A chamber of commerce asks more of a website than most organizations do. The site is the front door for prospective members, and it’s also the back office: applications arrive through it, dues are billed through it and the member roster lives inside it.
Members were already paying through Stripe. A rebuild that broke those subscriptions would have meant asking every member to re-enter a card, a poor look for an organization whose product is trust between businesses.
Off-the-shelf membership plugins were ruled out early. They hold member data in their shape and billing on their terms. So the membership layer became a custom WordPress plugin the chamber owns, with the existing subscriptions carried through untouched and the public pages built to the same standard as any site we launch.