Case study brief: Developing a modular multisite FE platform
Homefield College is an independent specialist college and charity that offers education, care, and support to people aged 16+, who have a learning disability and/or communication difficulties.
Along with providing a range of vocational education programmes, the College owns several community enterprises across the East Midlands. These assist students in gaining valuable experience, qualifications, and developing employability skills, whilst being within a real workplace environment.
To help grow these educational enterprise initiatives, Homefield required a series of accessible microsites developing, which could easily be managed by non-technical staff, all within one centralised system.
HeX’s vast WordPress Multisite expertise made this case study standout
Our team is no stranger to WordPress website builds. In fact, WordPress has been our preferred Content Management System (CMS), since HeX was first launched.
Utilising our web development team’s vast WordPress expertise enabled us to craft a variety of bespoke accessible themes. These themes were drawn upon from the main parent, HeX-built, Homefield website. Integrating themes across a multisite network, gave all child microsites a consistent structure that inherits the accessibility, features, and responsiveness from their primary site, whilst still giving each a unique, tailored brand and voice. This approach empowered our team to rapidly develop and deploy two child sites, with the flexibility of easily developing more in the future.
Web development activities delivered
- Rapid web development and deployment of accessible multisites
- Integrated site-wide features and third-party applications
- Project management and accessibility consultancy
- Automated and manual accessibility testing to meet WCAG 2.2 Level AA standards
- Enhanced SEO, performance optimisation, and schema support
- Ongoing HeX website maintenance support
Developing a network of dynamic multisites
HeX Productions is proud to have built Homefield College’s main website back in 2021 and forged a strong working relationship over the past four years through our ongoing digital maintenance support.
With the College’s vocational enterprises being a huge success within the local community, it was time to give them a fitting digital platform that reflected their exemplary customer service and hospitality in the industry. Using the theme structure from our original Homefield website build, our team set to work planning new dynamic microsites for two student-run ventures; Breward’s Coffee Shop and Spectrum Style hair salon.
The WordPress Multisite feature empowered our experts to swiftly build these new websites by pulling through core components, plugins, and templates from the parent platform. Using this as a base, our web development team customised child themes which provided a consistent hierarchy, structure, and functionality across the networked sites. Patterns were tailored to each enterprise to ensure they maintained their own strong visual identity that aligned with their distinctive brand.
Combining our bespoke HeX-built theme and WordPress’ Gutenberg block features, gave our team the flexibility to create an array of personalised content types. This included custom post types, such as galleries and testimonials, that can easily be added and edited by Homefield themselves.
To enhance customer service, a categorisation structure was placed behind the scenes on treatments and menu items. This enabled site visitors to swiftly filter and search to gain more information about their desired product or service before their visit. We also integrated application programming interfaces (APIs) for each of the businesses, including inclusively-built online contact forms and Google Maps to assist users with live directions to each location, whether travelling by foot or via transportation.
Striking news and events systems were integrated across the network. Not only do these features keep users up to date in an engaging way on their own site, but this content can also automatically pull through onto Homefield College’s main platform, with the additional ability to filter news elements for each site or by relevant topic. In turn, keeping everyone up to date on all of the students’ hard work and achievements in their workplace initiatives.
HeX not only understood our technical needs, but also aligned with our values around inclusion and empowerment. Their ability to deliver highly customisable and accessible designs, while also making content management intuitive for non-developers, made them a perfect fit.
Helen Gerrard: Communications Manager
Designed with digital accessibility at the forefront
Like our original website build for Homefield College, all multisites meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 Level AA standards.
Designing with an accessibility-first methodology ensured the sites are:
- Free from digital barriers for disabled users.
- Responsive across varying screen sizes and browsers.
- Compatible with assistive technologies, such as screen readers, keyboard navigation, and alternative input methods.
- Perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust.
- Offering an enhanced user journey, by driving visitors through the site due to its clear taxonomy and streamlined navigation.
- Meeting with Public Sector Legislation and the 2010 Equality Act.
To ensure this was the case, all custom templates and layouts underwent both automated scans and manual accessibility testing with the use of assistive technology devices, both during and after the web development project. This thorough process enables all Homefield College’s and their workplace enterprise visitors to gain an equal, inclusive, and user-friendly online experience.
Creating a long-term scalable and flexible digital solution with effortless management
We are extremely satisfied with the results of the project. We now have dynamic platforms to showcase our enterprises online, which has improved visibility, customer engagement, and accessibility for service users. The whole network is future-proofed for new ventures.
One key requirement the College needed was for the multisites to easily be updated and maintained by non-technical members of staff. WordPress’ intuitive stripped backend editor provides just that. This is due to site administrators being able to edit the web page and its features in the same visual way as you would see the published site on screen. Hence, requiring no knowledge of coding. What’s more is, all networked multisites can effortlessly be managed from one single location. Within this system, specific user roles can be configured to enable each sub-organisation to manage its own content easily and independently. Whilst the modular platform also gives peace of mind through enabling top level site owners to have an administrative oversight to ensure brands stay consistent and sites remain compliant.
Further benefits of having a WordPress Multisite Network, enables a centralised method for maintenance. This ensures all sites are kept secure and up to date with the latest plugins, which helps in reducing costs and complexity for our clients.
To improve how search engines and social media platforms interpret and display website content, our experts built schema support into the multisite base theme. Using Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) best practices and assessing performance metrics has helped Homefield to achieve high search rankings and greater engagement for the networked sites. By doing so, their enterprises are seen by their target audiences, resulting in traffic being driven to both their online presence and physical entities.
Using Homefield’s parent-theme structure has ensured long-term maintainability and flexibility for the future. With the microsite’s built-in scalability, it will support new projects and enterprises as they evolve; providing a long-term digital solution for the College’s valuable educational initiatives.
We look forward to continuing our ongoing work together with Homefield College.
More case studies about accessible web development
Homefield College
Learn about our original project with Homefield College. Upon discovering that their website was not Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) compliant, breaching public sector legislation, approached our accessibility experts requiring a redesign and rebuild of their website.
Nottingham College
Requiring an accessibility audit to test their site’s compliance, the College approached our team. HeX provided a six-month one-to-one consultancy contract to assist their web developer in enabling accessible educational resources and course information.
