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Case Study: Island Discovery Learning Community (IDLC)

I designed a child theme in WordPress for a distributed learning school that provides home learning programs to children across BC.

The project scope included a responsive WordPress theme, staff directory with filter, blog, improved security and site maintenance.

Site design by petescott.ca.

  • Non-Profit Project
  • Block Patterns
  • Advanced Custom Fields
  • Backups and Security

Custom WordPress Theme Development

What Was Needed

Island Discovery’s website was difficult to upgrade for staff and volunteers. The school needed to update and reorganize their content significantly given the increased interest in online learning and home learning in 2020.

Not only that, the school needed help monitoring site security, automated back-ups, regular site maintenance, and local SEO.

After a consultation with the Principal and staff, we decided on these priorities:

  • Updated site design
  • Responsive WordPress theme
  • Update to website copy and sitemap
  • A teacher and staff directory that could be filtered by program and location
  • A blog for announcements and posts by the Principal
  • New web hosting for easier WordPress maintenance and staging during the project
  • Significant upgrades in security and site maintenance
  • Staff training for updating content
  • Local SEO for Province-wide organic search

How I Helped

I designed a custom WordPress child theme with the following features:

  • New design with optimized images and updated colour scheme
  • Simplified site admin for staff and volunteers
  • Automated backups and security hardening
  • Custom permissions for site admin and editing roles
  • Helped reorganize and edit site content
  • Updated WordPress core and reduced plugins by more than half
  • On-Page and Local SEO fundamentals to help families find what they need
  • Implemented web hosting transfer and site staging during development
  • Ensured site has accessibility features in place to make the website accessible for a wide range of users

Need some guidance?

I offer free consultations and paid comprehensive audits with that give you the steps you need to take to improve your website and your business online.