The project overview
A few years ago, We Are North took over the open-source CMS platform MURA and transformed it into MASA. The result was a powerful, flexible CMS that perfectly meets the complex requirements of public and nonprofit sector clients. Binary Vision, a leading British digital agency based in London, uses MASA to build and manage websites for prominent organizations like the UK’s Royal Air Force (RAF), Childcare Choices, and the CSA Centre.
For over 35 years, Binary Vision has been delivering websites and digital solutions for the public sector, healthcare organizations, and knowledge-driven businesses. These clients require user-friendly, scalable, and secure digital platforms. To meet these needs, Binary Vision focuses on creating user-centric websites tailored to visitor behavior insights—making MASA an ideal CMS choice.
Open-source CMS with built-in privacy
In its early days, Binary Vision developed its own CMS. However, as the company grew, it decided to prioritize customer-facing solutions over back-end technology. In the public sector, a CMS that supports compliance management is essential. After evaluating several open-source options, Binary Vision selected MURA.
MASA CMS originated from MURA®, a popular open-source CMS, before version 10 became proprietary. As a dedicated supporter of the platform and open-source software, We Are North forked the original codebase, ensuring MASA CMS remains freely available for all.
“Other platforms rely on countless third-party add-ons that may or may not be kept up-to-date. With MASA, you have an excellent core CMS that gives you the flexibility to do whatever you need. It’s highly customizable, expandable, and configurable, allowing us to tailor our clients’ needs to their users’ requirements.” Paul Norris, CEO van Binary Vision
The following three client cases demonstrate how Binary Vision uses MASA in everyday practice.
Royal Air Force: easy management at scale
The RAF’s website hosts a vast amount of content, including details on bases, aircraft, squadrons, groups—essentially every part of their organization. It even features a library of interactive 3D models. Managing such a large volume of content would typically be a complex and resource-intensive task. With MASA, content relationships are automated. For example, when someone views an aircraft like the F-35B Lightning, related information—such as its associated base and operating squadrons—appear automatically.
No matter how large the site grows, MASA ensures the content structure updates seamlessly without requiring manual adjustments.
Childcare Choices: scalable performance
The Childcare Choices website, operated by the UK tax authority HMRC, helps parents determine their eligibility for childcare support. Initially projected to attract around one million visitors in its first year, the site reached that milestone in just a few weeks—all while maintaining excellent performance and stability.
MASA’s enterprise-grade Java-based foundation provides significant power for resource-intensive tasks, such as automatic image resizing. Developers can stage multiple changes simultaneously and preview them before deployment. This capability makes structural updates much faster compared to other CMS platforms, ensuring scalability without compromising functionality.
CSA Centre: granular permissions and publishing control
The CSA Centre, supported by Barnardo’s, is dedicated to addressing child sexual abuse. Its multidisciplinary team collaborates with partners across government, local authorities, healthcare, education, law enforcement, and the nonprofit sector. The CSA Centre’s focuses on empowering professionals to recognize and address child sexual abuse more effectively, which demands strict technical and organizational standards.
Managing content permissions is a common challenge, but MASA simplifies this process by allowing granular control. The CSA Centre can assign permissions and restrictions at specific levels, creating a secure environment that supports decentralized publishing and collaboration.
Rapid development
As MASA’s developers, We Are North provided training to Binary Vision’s team, enabling them to build on MASA’s capabilities effectively. In turn, Binary Vision shares this expertise with their clients, creating a collaborative feedback loop that continually enhances MASA’s functionality.
This ongoing collaboration plays a critical role in MASA’s evolution as an open-source platform. In the public sector, long delays for solutions or disputes over platform ownership are inacceptable. With MASA, patches and fixes are delivered quickly and reliably—precisely what the platform is designed for.
Interested in the best open-source CMS around?
Contact Vincent today to learn how MASA CMS can benefit your organization.