Available for new project
Every so often, a project is not about replacing what came before. It is about protecting what already works while rebuilding the technology underneath it.
Westmount Magazine is one of those projects.
WestmountMag.ca is an independent bilingual digital publication covering Westmount, Montreal and the surrounding cultural community. Over many years, the magazine had built a substantial archive of articles, photography, categories and specialized post layouts.
The publication received grant funding intended to support the digital needs of the publishing sector. The challenge was turning that investment into a modern website without losing the familiar design, editorial workflow or years of existing content that made Westmount Magazine what it was.
Westmount Magazine was running on Pixelgrade’s Bucket theme. The theme had provided useful publishing features, but it was no longer being maintained. As WordPress, PHP and the magazine’s plugins continued to evolve, the old theme became increasingly difficult to update safely.
Normal maintenance had become a risk. Themes and plugins could not be updated confidently, functionality was beginning to break and even routine design changes were limited by the unsupported framework.
The simplest option would have been to install a modern theme and accept a completely different website.
That was not what the client wanted, and it was not what the publication needed.
Westmount Magazine wanted to retain its recognizable layout, familiar reading experience and specialized publishing tools. At the same time, the new website needed to be easier to maintain, more flexible for editors and compatible with a modern WordPress environment.
We rebuilt the website using Elementor Pro, extensive custom CSS and a reusable single-post template.
The visual goal was continuity. Existing readers should still feel that they were visiting Westmount Magazine. The major difference would be behind the scenes, where the publication would no longer depend on an abandoned theme.
The technical challenge went much deeper than recreating the front-end design.
Thousands of existing articles already contained post settings created by the original Bucket theme. Those settings controlled whether an article appeared in a featured area, entered a category slider, used a sidebar, displayed a full-width image or behaved as a gallery.
Discarding that metadata would have meant manually reviewing and reconfiguring years of published content.
Instead, we reverse-engineered the retired theme, identified the original WordPress database fields and reused them in the new Elementor system. Historical content could therefore continue behaving as intended without being rebuilt one article at a time.
We created a custom Westmount Post Settings panel inside the WordPress editor. It restores the publication-specific controls the editorial team relied on while connecting them to the new Elementor templates and queries.
Editors can flag an article for the Featured Posts area. A custom Elementor query reads the original post metadata and automatically includes selected stories in the correct loop.
Selected articles can be added to the appropriate category carousel. This gives the editorial team direct control over which stories receive additional visibility without changing the page design manually.
The sidebar can be removed from an individual article when a cleaner, more focused layout is needed. The main content area then expands automatically.
This is particularly useful for advertorials and sponsored content, where the publication may want the article and its visuals to take priority over the standard sidebar.
Editors can choose a full-width presentation for an article’s featured image. When enabled, the image spans the page above the main article and sidebar, giving major stories and visual features more impact.
The gallery option restores the publication’s original photography workflow.
When a post is designated as a gallery, the standard featured image is hidden and the gallery becomes the main visual presentation. Readers can move through the images while the editor retains control over the existing gallery data, slider height, image scaling, transition style, autoplay and timing.
The settings panel may look simple to an editor, but each option controls a different part of the new website.
The work included:
The result is an editorial system that feels straightforward to use because the complicated work happens underneath it.
A news or magazine website is not simply a collection of blog posts.
Westmount Magazine publishes across a deep category structure that includes local events, real estate, art and culture, food, architecture, business, wellness and community life. It also supports photography-led stories, bilingual content, advertising and sponsored editorial formats.
That means the website must serve several groups at once:
The new system was designed around those operational needs, not only around how the homepage looked on launch day.
Grant funding can give an independent publication the opportunity to make an important digital investment. That investment should continue creating value after the funded project is complete.
For Westmount Magazine, the rebuild focused on three priorities:
This is the difference between applying a new design to an old problem and rebuilding the platform around how the publication actually works.
The Speed Train is based in Toronto, while Westmount Magazine serves readers in Westmount, Montreal and surrounding communities.
The project required close communication, careful testing and an understanding of the client’s existing workflow. Every feature had to be compared against the legacy website, tested with historical content and then integrated into the new Elementor templates.
The grant supported the modernization. The development strategy ensured that modernization did not erase what the publication had already built.
Westmount Magazine did not need to become a different publication.
It needed a website that could carry its identity, archive and editorial experience forward without remaining dependent on an unsupported theme.
We were proud to rebuild that foundation.
Have you received funding through a Canadian publishing, journalism or small-business program?
The Speed Train can help you turn that investment into a modern WordPress platform while protecting the content, search visibility and workflows your organization already depends on.
Talk to The Speed Train about your website project.
Funding programs, eligibility rules and application periods can change. Canadian publishers can review the current Canada Periodical Fund and Digital Periodical Aid to Publishers information directly through Canadian Heritage. The Speed Train provides website strategy and development services, not grant-application or funding advice.
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