Supporting one of Australia’s leading public policy think tanks

Background

Grattan Institute publishes a large volume of research reports, policy analysis and expert commentary each year. Its website plays a central role in this work, acting as the primary platform for distributing research to policymakers, journalists and the public.

The site was originally designed and developed by Gozer, with a strong emphasis on presenting research clearly and making publications easy to explore.

As the Institute’s research library and audience grew, maintaining the site’s performance, security and technical foundations became increasingly important. The platform needed ongoing attention to ensure it remained stable, fast and capable of supporting new features and publishing needs.

Mainstay Digital has worked with Grattan Institute for several years, providing ongoing technical stewardship of the site and supporting the Institute’s team with both day-to-day improvements and longer-term enhancements. Through a combination of ongoing website support, website maintenance and targeted web development, we help ensure the platform continues to perform at the level required for a nationally recognised research organisation.

The Need

For Grattan Institute, the website is far more than a marketing asset. It is the organisation’s primary publishing platform.

When major reports are released, the site often receives significant national attention from media outlets, policymakers and researchers. This places real demands on performance, reliability and searchability.

Over time, several priorities emerged:

• Maintaining strong technical foundations as the WordPress ecosystem evolves
• Improving discoverability across a growing body of research content
• Enhancing internal publishing workflows
• Strengthening security and reducing spam
• Supporting analytics and tracking for audience insights
  

Rather than treating the website as a static build, the goal was to ensure it remained a well-maintained, evolving platform that could continue supporting the Institute’s work for years to come.

Our Work with Grattan Institute

Mainstay Digital works with the Institute as its long-term technical web partner, providing a combination of support, maintenance and targeted development.

Platform maintenance and stability

Platform maintenance and stability

A key part of our role is maintaining the technical health of the site.

This includes managing plugin updates, conducting periodic plugin audits, upgrading PHP versions, and ensuring the platform remains secure and stable as underlying technologies evolve.

We have also strengthened security through tighter Cloudflare configuration and improved spam protection.

Performance optimisation

Because Grattan’s research often attracts significant media attention, performance is critical.

We have implemented a range of performance improvements across caching, asset delivery and backend configuration to ensure the site remains fast and stable even during traffic spikes associated with major report releases.

Feature improvements

Alongside maintenance, we have delivered targeted development improvements to better support the Institute’s publishing needs.

These include:

• An advanced custom search system to improve discoverability across research and expert content
• Flexible content blocks and layout components to support evolving publishing workflows
• Integration of donation forms to support supporter contributions
• Improvements to internal content management processes

These enhancements help ensure the website continues to support both the Institute’s editorial team and its large research audience.

Technical SEO and analytics

We also assist with the site’s technical SEO and analytics foundations.

This includes improvements to search indexing, metadata handling and analytics tracking, as well as the implementation of Google Tag integrations to provide clearer visibility into audience engagement with research publications.

Ongoing support

This allows the Institute’s team to quickly resolve issues, implement new ideas and maintain confidence that the platform is operating reliably. In addition to development work, we provide ongoing technical support for fixes, improvements and enhancements as new needs arise.

Outcomes

Through this ongoing partnership, Grattan Institute now benefits from a web platform that is actively maintained and continuously improved.

Key outcomes include:

• Faster and more reliable website performance
• Stronger security and reduced spam
• Improved discoverability across research content
• More flexible publishing workflows for internal teams
• A cleaner, more maintainable technical architecture

Just as importantly, the Institute now has a trusted technical partner helping ensure its website continues to support its role in Australia’s public policy landscape.

Where To From Here

Mainstay Digital continues to work with Grattan Institute as its long-term technical partner, supporting the ongoing evolution of the platform.

Future improvements are likely to focus on:

• Identifying operational efficiencies within publishing workflows
• Exploring automation opportunities
• Continued performance and technical optimisation
• Accessibility improvements to ensure research remains widely accessible

By treating the website as an evolving platform rather than a one-off project, Grattan Institute is well positioned to continue delivering high-impact research to policymakers, media and the public across Australia.