by Jay Frost

I’m pleased to add a new website to the family: Third Church of Christ, Scientist, Washington DC. They were already running WordPress, but using the default 2010 theme with lots of plugins, and the site was very far behind on updates. Additionally, the content had become quite a mish-mash after being assembled, I would guess, by several different people working on different projects over the past couple of years. (This is a common issue for small businesses and non-profits that don’t have a dedicated webmaster!)

1. My first step was re-organizing all of the content: making sure that each page’s title described what it was about, removed outdated information, and getting some new copy for certain parts.
2. Once that was done, I reorganized the menu to be simple on the top-level navigation and logical in the drop-down options. Sometimes you need to consolidate several different pages under one parent page, and other times there are too many child pages that are related and some of them need to be moved. (For some reason, this is my favorite part!)
3. Finally, I talked to the marketing committee and got a sense for the look and feel they were going for with the new site design. They wanted simple, urban, and perhaps slightly non-profit. I selected the theme, went to town with some customizations, and we were good to go.
4. I also installed WPTouch app (with a few adjustments) for making the site mobile-friendly.