Time to celebrate again!🎉🎉 I’m feeling great joy today having recently developed and launched a WordPress website for a nonprofit organization, Youth Enrichment Services (YES) of Boston, MA.
YES delivers transformative experiential programs for children, tweens, and teens. These programs are designed to foster self-esteem and confidence, promote effective collaboration and sharing, and cultivate leadership skills grounded in harmony. 💪
I feel a particular joy working with the YES organization, not only because it’s been a long-time client, but because it plays a vital role in shaping the futures of our children. And in my mind, that means shaping our collective future. The work YES does today will impact our communities in the near future — and for generations to come.
Routine WordPress website Maintenance reveals Risk
For years, I’ve managed the monthly updates for WordPress, themes, plugins, and other software at the website. After I upgrade the software, I run a virus scan. In Q3 2024, the scan flagged an abandoned plugin, and over the next few months, more outdated plugins were identified.
Around the same time, I discovered that the theme (the foundation of a WordPress website) on which the YES website was built, was no longer being updated.
This created a risky situation. The WordPress core would continue to be updated, and the theme would not. Eventually, a gap would exist between them and continue to expand over time. That gap is ‘mecca’ for hackers as stagnant files sitting on a web server are a primary target for mal-intentioned hacker bots (programs).
YES management and I discussed the situation and decided that it was in its best interest to create a new website.
And, the timing could not have been more perfect! YES is moving to a new location. So, a new home for the organization and a new home for the website puts the world in balance. (Click the image to learn more.)
Business Requirements for the new website
YES wanted:
- new technology (a WordPress theme using updated software),
- a more visually pleasing and contemporary design, and,
- a website with better mobile responsiveness.
Management had a very clear vision of how the new website should look and function. We reviewed a number of websites with similar and different offerings so that they could point out components, functionality, and design pieces that they liked and some they did not.
I was already familiar with the colors, branding requirements, and messaging, so I took the list of likes and dislikes and created sample pages.
Management reviewed the pages and provided feedback. I tweaked the pages, and we did the tweak & review cycle a couple of times until I had the style as they wanted it. Then, I started development in earnest.
About the Launched Website
We chose the Enfold theme because it comes with built-in functionality that Management had admired on other websites. I added some global customizations to the Enfold base, then created 45 pages and converted 246 posts. I right-sized 215 PNG and JPG images, then converted them to WEBP format, the current preferred image format.
The result is a beautiful website that will serve the organization for years to come. In addition to being easy on the eyes, it is easy to navigate so that visitors can quickly get to the information they want. In addition, Enfold has a simple back-end interface that YES staff will use to keep the website content updated.
Happy clients make me smile!
Here’s a few words from the Executive Director about the new WordPress website (I added the bold).
“The refreshed YES website looks great and will be a tremendous resource for our families, volunteers, and supporters,” says Bryan Van Dorpe, Executive Director. “The website is how many people first learn about YES or a resource they regularly use for information. It is easy to navigate, visually pleasing, and shows significant improvement over our previous site. Karen did a terrific job and YES’s new online presence reflects that great work.”