I didn’t quite know what I was getting myself into, being early in my career and without any WordPress experience. The project ended up being much more than a simple migration but it was a great collaboration. I spent about 9 months working on my first project with the HERC team. We came up with a much more beautiful and informative site that they could feel proud to share with their community and donors. I was initially drawn to the HERC because of my own experience in high school but fell in love with the organization even more as I got to learn about their history and impact.

Staying involved

Naturally, I didn’t want my involvement to end there. I’ve continued to help them with their WordPress site over the years, mostly with small updates as new reports and events happened. I’ve also had many chances to engage with the students that they support through panel discussions, STEM presentations, and a brief mentorship match. I was honored to receive their Make a Difference Award at this past May’s annual celebration.

Since the first site design project, they’d grown to reach over 1,600 students annually across 13 partner schools in 3 districts. They’d launched an Alumni Success Program, expanded beyond Boston into Revere and Chelsea, and built up an even greater team of leaders and coaches empowering low-income youth across the Boston area. Unfortunately, their website was still telling the story of who they were, not who they’d become. That led me to reaching out to offer some of my time to give it a complete refresh!

Redesign goals

Looking through their existing site statistics, old and new content, and chatting with their team, I realized this wasn’t just about updating copy and swapping out photos. Boston HERC needed their digital presence to reflect their empowering, student-first approach to supporting first-generation college students.

My focus for this redesign was on three key areas:

Storytelling that matches their identity: Softening the overall feel of the site that allows the stories of their community and students to shine through more naturally.

Data-driven messaging: Integrating their impressive outcomes data throughout the site, not buried in an annual report, but woven into the narrative of what makes Boston HERC different.

Streamlined user journeys: Whether someone was a prospective student, a potential funder, or a school administrator looking to partner, the site needed to quickly communicate Boston HERC’s value proposition and next steps.

There’s something humbling about helping an organization that’s been steadily doing the work for over 25 years. I admire how Boston HERC has been laser-focused on their mission to equip first-generation youth to access and thrive in higher education.

Technical approach

As a developer, I often get caught up in technical complexity and can be guilty of overengineering architecture at times. My latest WordPress administration work that I did for HERC was a nice way to challenge that inclination. My first time around, I used underscores as the base for the theme I created but spent a lot of time tweaking things, especially as I tried to make the site responsive for smaller devices. I had to write a lot of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for the theme and had to figure out some of the oddities of WordPress PHP for some customizations I needed.

For my second time theming this site, I decided to lean into existing technologies, themes, widgets, and extensions so that it’s easier for the HERC team to maintain and for me to make adjustments, without having to spend too much time in the weeds. I decided to use an Elementor theme as the basis of the latest site. I still had to inject in the HERC brand, create some custom assets, and figure out how I wanted to structure the pages but it was a much smoother experience this time.

I wanted to make sure that I was using my time on the most impactful side of this work: making sure their story is told effectively. When Boston HERC’s website better reflects their sophistication and impact, it helps them reach more students, attract more funding, and partner with more schools. This project was a great reminder of how technology can serve a mission, not the other way around.

You can see the live transformation at bostonherc.org.

If their mission speaks to you too, consider giving to this great organization!