Over the last couple of weeks three INN members who we've worked with over the past few months have launched new websites using our Largo WordPress framework.
In addition to some common requests like making their sites mobile friendly and responsive, we worked with each of the three organizations on some custom design and functionality and built a couple of new open source tools for you to use.
Investigate West
Investigate West wanted to make their homepage more of a branding statement featuring their partners, awards they've won and the impact of their work. In addition to building a new homepage grid, we worked with them to add credits for partner organizations to their projects and stories and also created a way for them to show which of their major projects had received awards.
Midwest Energy News
Midwest Energy News asked us to help them increase recirculation of visitors through the site and also to increase subscribers to their two newsletter products. The resulting redesign features a number of new design elements we're prototyping for future versions of Largo including a number of changes to article pages as well as some new homepage layout options.
We also made it easy for Midwest Energy News to insert newsletter signup boxes almost anywhere on the site and created a new plugin (a revamped version of an older plugin called Argo Links) to streamline the curation of links, creation of link roundups and allow them to push roundup posts directly to MailChimp.
Nonprofit Quarterly
Nonprofit Quarterly migrated to WordPress from Joomla and wanted to make their site better for mobile visitors. In addition, they wanted to be able to feature popular stories in a number of places on the site. We've never been particularly impressed with the various popular posts plugins that exist for WordPress, so apprentice developer Will Haynes wrote a new plugin that pulls data from Google Analytics and algorithmically determines popular posts in a much more accurate and performative way.
Open Source
As with all of our projects, the code we wrote for these projects is open source and you're welcome to borrow bits and pieces to use in your projects.
All three child themes rely on the current version of Largo as their parent theme (here's more on WordPress child themes if you're just getting started).
You can find the child theme code here:
And the two plugins we referenced:
- Link Roundups
- Analytic Bridge (popular posts)
Work With Us
If you'd like to work with us on an upcoming project we are accepting new clients and would love to talk with you.
We offer substantial discounts on our services to INN member organizations and other nonprofit organizations but you do not have to be a member to work with us.
To discuss hiring us for an upcoming project, just email nerds@inn.org with a short description, anticipated timeline and budget and we'll be in touch!