Acting Studio Chicago

Chicago's acting school runs on a custom PHP CMS: classes, enrollment, payments, 47 GB of headshots. I containerized it, moved the media to a CDN, built a staging pipeline and gave the owner a live business dashboard. Same site, on foundations nothing is scary to change.

• The legacy LAMP stack running as two reproducible containers, with code and database outside them so everyday edits never need a rebuild.
• 47 GB of student headshots and documents migrated to object storage behind a CDN, verified file-for-file.
• A staging server that auto-deploys on every push, plus a rehearsed production cutover plan.
• “Business Pulse”, a dashboard on the live database: revenue since 2014, fill rates, and a panel that turns waitlists into estimated revenue.
• A read-only security sweep and a cardholder-data review.
• A plain-English “how your website works” explainer written for the owner, not for developers.