DESIGN, Development & Integrations

From 40+ websites to 1 WordPress multisite

Varde Municipality needed a new platform because their old web solution stopped receiving updates and was therefore approaching its EOL (End of Life).

There was therefore a desire to move to WordPress CMS to streamline the editing of their many solutions and avoid ending up with a new EOL at a later point.

Problem

Varde Municipality’s old web solution stopped being updated, and at some point this would create security vulnerabilities and prevent further development.

They already had other solutions in WordPress and therefore wanted to use WordPress as their future platform.

Plan

The plan was to build on the existing design, but modernise it where needed. In addition, the website had to be upgraded where it did not comply with WCAG legislation.

There was also a need for help migrating content, as many information pages had to be moved from the current solution to the new one.

Result

Varde Municipality received a new platform built in WordPress as the CMS, providing the flexibility to continuously edit the website’s content and create new pages as needed.

In addition, the platform is continuously updated, ensuring the website is always up to date and security patched.

Development of a new platform

Updating the look and meeting modern website requirements

When Varde Municipality changed platform because the old solution was not future-proof, the need was not to do a complete redesign of the existing platform. However, we agreed that parts of the old platform were no longer visually up to date, and these design tasks were handled alongside the new development. This meant, among other things, working with fonts, colours and overall look and feel to “freshen up” the current design.

In addition, other rules regarding WCAG (accessibility) had been introduced since the old platform was built, and there was a focus on meeting these requirements.
This included enabling the use of the “Tab” key to navigate around the website and ensuring that colour contrasts were sufficient.

See Varde Municipality’s new web solution

Collaboration

Time was a key factor in the process

Because the old platform stopped receiving updates, Varde Municipality’s biggest pain point was getting a new platform live quickly to ensure a stable solution going forward. Therefore, together we established a strong process with fast sparring and dialogue as needed.

In addition, we helped move all content from the existing platform to the new one to reduce the time from finished product to launch of the new platform—something that can otherwise become an unknown time drain in larger digital projects.