Third Sector WordPress
Scottish Drugs Forum
01.-
Brief
About The Project
Scottish Drugs Forum (SDF) plays a pivotal role in shaping Scotland’s approach to drug-related issues. As a leading charity, SDF influences government policy and serves as an industry-leading voice among their third-sector peers.
SDF approached Nexus with a clear need: a new website that would reflect their bold, evolving brand vision. The brief included essential requirements such as a WordPress platform to empower the SDF team with full control over their web content, the ability to accept donations, and the creation of a resource hub and events section, among other functionalities. Following a comprehensive project scoping, we prepared a detailed proposal, met with the SDF team, and agreed on a launch timeline.
02.-
the build
Our Design Process
We initiated the project by sharing our development timetable and wireframes with SDF, ensuring transparency and alignment from the outset. We set up a fresh WordPress installation on a subdomain, allowing the client to preview our work at each stage. The first milestone was presenting the homepage, which set the tone for the site’s overall look and feel. SDF sought a dark design complemented by bold colours, creating a fresh, modern aesthetic that would distinguish their site from those of their peers.
Our designer collaborated closely with SDF’s in-house designer on the theme for each section, assigning colours to different content types to guide users intuitively through the site. We strategically positioned new content produced by the SDF team, enabling other stakeholders within the charity to monitor progress and approve each key section. Concurrently, our development team built a custom resource hub to categorise and share SDF’s extensive collection of educational documents. We also configured the Event Tickets Plus plugin and demonstrated its capabilities, showing how SDF could manage events and ticketing directly on their website, eliminating the need for third-party services like TicketBrite.
03.-
Results
Project Completion & Launch
In the final stages of the project, we set up the donation facility, provided documentation for event and ticket management, and conducted weekly Teams calls with the SDF team as we approached the June launch window.
Before going live, we migrated the site from our development server to our WordPress-optimised server to ensure optimal performance and site speed. We completed the project by updating the DNS to point the domain to our server. Since the website’s launch, we have continued to support Scottish Drugs Forum, ensuring their site remains optimised for the dynamic needs of their organisation and its online presence.