From WordPress to a website wired into the school

WordPress is a fair place to start, and plenty of good websites run on it. The Forerunners had simply outgrown it. These were the main problems:

• Every feature meant another plugin, and each plugin needs updating, can clash with the others and adds weight to the page
• As the most widely used website platform, WordPress is also the most targeted, so it needs constant patching just to stay safe
• A full WooCommerce shop was running just to take an admissions fee
• Nothing connected to the school’s records, so details collected on the website had to be moved across by hand

The design had dated too, with a pale baby blue that undersold a serious school. A redesign on the same platform would have kept all of the problems above, so we rebuilt from scratch.

The new design uses the royal blue, gold and green the school asked for, with a classical serif for headings and a clean, readable typeface for everything else. It feels calm and established, which matters when parents are deciding who to trust with their child’s education.

The homepage speaks directly to the three fears Muslim parents raise about homeschooling: falling behind, isolation and losing their deen. It answers each one directly. Behind it are more than 30 pages covering programmes, GCSE pathways, the curriculum, the weekly timetable, fees, scholarships, admissions, vacancies and safeguarding, so a parent can get a real answer without having to ring up.

• A prospectus download that emails the parent straight away and notifies the school
• A free consultation form, with WhatsApp and phone a tap away
• A blog and a built-in website editor, so content can change without touching code

The biggest change sits behind the design. The school runs on LiveClass, the school management software we built for online schools, and the new website is connected to it directly.

• Parent sign in and Student sign in sit at the top of every page and open the school’s own LiveClass portal
• Enrol now leads through a clear online enrolment page to the LiveClass registration form, where the family pays the admissions fee straight after applying
• Applications land in the school’s records, so nobody retypes them. See how this works in student enrolment automation
• Live Zoom lessons, attendance, homework, recordings and messages all sit in that one system, behind one login
• Parents can add the school to their home screen and get notifications on their phone, with no app to download

Moving away from WordPress is where sites often lose their Google rankings, so we redirected the old addresses and checked 47 of them one by one to make sure links and bookmarks still reach a live page. Even the old shop links now send families to the online enrolment page.

The Forerunners now has a website that looks the part and needs no plugin upkeep, connected to the system that runs the school day. You can read more about the platform in our LiveClass case study, or see how online schools manage students, payments and messages. If your own WordPress site is starting to feel the same way, our web design team can help, or try the free website check.