Case Study

Mortgage Alliance – Enterprise WordPress Platform

Project Goal: Modernize the WordPress platform Mortgage Alliance shares with the other M3 Tech brands: custom blocks, broker backend, calculators, SEO and infrastructure.

Mortgage Alliance mortgage brokerage website

Client

Mortgage Alliance

View Website

Technologies

  • WordPress
  • Bootstrap 5
  • Webpack 5
  • React
  • PHP
  • MySQL
  • BOSS API
  • REST API
  • Gutenberg Blocks
  • SASS
  • Azure VM
  • CI/CD
  • Google Maps API
  • Polylang
  • JSON-LD Schema
  • Didomi

Deliverables

Context

Mortgage Alliance is one of Canada’s largest mortgage brokerage networks with thousands of agents across the country. As part of the M3 Tech group, the Mortgage Alliance platform provides mortgage tools, broker profiles, and educational resources to homebuyers nationwide.

Mortgage Alliance is one of five brands of the M3 Tech group that share one WordPress platform: one parent theme and block library, with a child theme per brand. WPlook Studio took the platform over from a previous agency and developed it from 2021 to 2025, as one engagement covering all five brands. Most of the work below was done on that shared platform, so it also appears in the case studies for Multi-Prêts, Invis, Mortgage Intelligence and Intelligence Hypothécaire. The Multi-Prêts case study gives the most detail.

The Challenge

When WPlook Studio took the shared platform over, pages took 16 seconds to load and the platform ran on twelve Azure servers. Mortgage Alliance needed a faster site, a broker, office and franchise backend kept in step with the BOSS CRM, and continuing SEO work to stay visible in mortgage search.

What We Delivered

  • Custom Gutenberg blocks for CTAs, a location finder, broker information panels and content management, built with React and the WordPress Block API
  • Broker, office, and franchise backend built on custom post types and kept in sync with the BOSS CRM through a JWT-authenticated API integration shared by the platform
  • 7 mortgage calculators for affordability, payment, refinance, rent-vs-buy, debt consolidation, closing fees and custom rates, with dynamic rate data
  • Bootstrap 5 front-end with brand-specific SASS theming and Webpack 5 build pipeline
  • Broker search with Google Maps API integration and geocoding
  • Schema markup for Organization, Financial Service and Breadcrumb structured data
  • Bilingual support via Polylang with translation strings and hreflang tags
  • Infrastructure migration from Azure Web App to Azure VMs with cPanel, consolidating the platform from 12 servers to 2 (production and staging) on Azure, which the group already used
  • CI/CD pipelines for continuous deployment
  • SEO consulting on Core Web Vitals, technical audits and keyword strategy
  • Didomi consent management for GDPR/privacy compliance
  • Google Tag Manager with per-brand container configuration

Results

  • Page load reduced from 16s to under 1s
  • 12 servers consolidated to 2 (production and staging), with auto-scaling removed and lower Azure costs
  • Improved Core Web Vitals across all pages
  • Faster deployment cycles through modernized CI/CD