Centralizing Control Over 54 Separate Websites

Visual note: Due to my lack of usable visual documentation from this project, I made this nifty graphic.

My Role: Project manager, Assistant Director of Communications

Backstory: I began working at Harmony in 2014 in the central administration office. This fast-growing network of 48 charter schools in six districts all around the state of Texas was struggling to keep up brand and messaging consistency. Each campus and district had its own website and individual URLs, all managed locally on their own servers. Administratively, installing security certificates and adequately complying with ADA accessibility on each site was also difficult to manage. Central oversight had become critical. After our chief officer convinced stakeholders it was time for change, my communications team created a plan for migration and began the process.

Working with my IT/web manager, we researched current sites, performed surveys to gain insight and built a campus website shell for testing. We listed all of the must-haves alongside the nice-to-haves, and analyzed ways to allow the campus sites to be consistent but still maintain their unique features while meeting basic standards.

Using Wordpress, we created accounts at different security levels for everyone involved. I oversaw the creation of training modules as a prerequisite for accessing their accounts, to ensure everyone knew how to use the new platform before logging in. The central admin IT team worked alongside our communications team, as each campus IT person and most principals were trained on the new system.

Challenges: Pushback from campus administrators was the primary issue, with two major concerns. First, they worried that parents would not be able to find the websites, since we were changing urls to subdomains. We agreed to keep all current URLs active, with a plan to redirect traffic to the new subdomains well into the future. We also made sure that Google business and maps listings were up to date, and incorporated good SEO techniques to help our schools move to the top of searches.

The second big concern was maintaining the local staff's ability to update content on their sites. We added API widgets into the sites that connected to specific Google calendars, spreadsheets and documents that, when updated with the usual simple means would automatically update information on the website. We also embedded social media feeds, so that urgent posts would be visible to anyone who visited.

For the communications team, our big concerns were accessibility, consistency and branding. To address accessibility, we focused on having alt text for all images, increased font readability and contrast for use with text-to-speech readers and added a Google translate plugin for non-English speaking parents. Since we were able to properly employ brand and messaging standards across the sites easily with the new structure, our time was freed up to help departments and campuses with other brand and messaging needs.

Successes: After the (to be expected) change management hiccups were overcome, the new sites not only looked slick, but served the needs of the campus employees, students and parents well. Accessibility became a priority, with training and quality checks built into regular website management schedules.

During Hurricane Harvey in 2017, the update proved successful. All over Texas, campuses were dealing with power outages, flooding, damaged schools and students in crisis. We were able to take advantage of the centralized features by posting much-needed weather and school closing updates so that the local administrators could take care of their families and focus on other important things. We even used these new features to post information on where students and families could find help.

Current menu example below:

Note: Some of the stock photography I took while at Harmony is still in use on the site. The photo featured above is one. I left there in 2019. See more of my photography here.