nick/gehring

Go West, Young Nick

Nonprofit upgrades UX, gains Gutenberg, emends editing

This illustrates a screenshot for Go West, Young Nick

The challenge

The Council of State Governments (CSG) is a multi-chapter organization spread across the United States. While each office is unique in terms of the regional audience it serves, they all share a common brand. The goal for the CSG West office was to adapt aspects of the eastern branches’ looks into its own while learning from how those sites were created.

It would be a WordPress-based site using the Block Editor, the first of the chapters to do so. This new site would be a big step for CSG West – previously staffers used Dreamweaver to update its pages.

What I did

Starting with a blank Timber theme, I created the visual underpinnings of the West’s website, working in the color palette of blues, yellow and grays to form a clean and professional look. Additionally, I created custom blocks for the Block Editor, including ones for events, news and people. The backend editor also mimics the frontend aesthetic as closely as it can to make it seamless for editors.

The outcome

Updating the CSG West site is much easier and quicker. WordPress allows more than one person to edit and does not rely on outdated and not-beginner-friendly Dreamweaver. The office is happy with its new site and has an on-going reatiner with eleventy to provide technical assistance and updates.

A look at the CSG West site home page before its redesign

Before

A look at the CSG West site home page after its redesign

After

An inside page for the Agriculture and Water Comittee showing a photo of a river and green grass surrounding it

Inside page for Agriculture & Water Committee

Industry: Government, nonprofits

Tech: PHP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Vue, Timber, Twig, WordPress, Gutenberg/Block Editor

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