Most school websites are built for the school, not for the people who use them. Parents visit with a specific question: Is there school today? When is the next event? What is due? Here is how to plan a school site around those questions.
Start with the top tasks
Ask a few parents, students and front-office staff what they look for most. The answers are usually the same:
- Calendar and upcoming events
- Closures, delays and urgent announcements
- Lunch menus and bell schedules
- Contact information and staff directory
- Forms (enrollment, permission slips, volunteer sign-ups)
- Teacher or class pages with assignments
Put those on the homepage, and push the mission statement and history to the About page.
A homepage that answers questions
- An alert bar at the very top for closures and urgent news, easy for office staff to turn on and off.
- Upcoming events pulled automatically from the calendar.
- Quick links to the top tasks above.
- Recent news for celebrations and updates.
Let staff update it
A site only stays current if the people with the information can update it. WordPress lets you give teachers and office staff their own logins with limited permissions: an Editor can manage news and pages, while a Contributor can draft posts for approval. Build reusable layouts (patterns) so new pages look right without design work.
Calendars and forms
A calendar plugin like The Events Calendar, or an embedded shared Google Calendar, keeps events in one place. Replace PDF forms with online forms (we use Gravity Forms) that email the right person and store submissions, with payment fields for fees when needed.
Accessibility is required
Public schools in the US must meet web accessibility rules, and every school should. That means real text instead of images of flyers, alt text on photos, good color contrast, captions on videos, and forms that work with a keyboard. Build this in from the start; fixing it later costs more.
Many schools, one platform
Districts can use WordPress Multisite to run each school as its own site with a shared design and a single place to manage updates and users.
Planning a new school site?
We build WordPress sites that staff can manage without calling a developer, and our Care Plans keep them updated and secure. Tell us about your school.