The beauty of applying our simple and specific principles is that we can work the same way no matter the size of the project. The actual steps of the solution may differ but the problem to solve is the same: how do we take all the information we have and organize it in a way that’s logical and easy to follow, and communicates clearly with both the owner of the site and the audience the owner wants to reach.

To means that while training in how to use your the backend of your website is one of your last steps, planning for how to set up the backend of your website is one of our first steps. We build all our websites to be editable by you, the client, because we believe it’s important that you feel like you’re in control of your website and not the other way around. Here are some examples of what this looks like for three different projects.

1. Keep what you need, ditch what you don’t

Remember when I talked before about how working only on code with no connection to clients or users meant I was guided mostly by what made my developer life easier? Well now I’m prompted to find new ways to make life easier for clients. For example, I recently transitioned writer Tanya from an old (5 human year, so like 20 internet years) and no-longer-updated theme to the latest WordPress Gutenberg theme. No fancy backend, no custom post types or code of any kind (except a few lines of custom styles. I can’t help myself!) While the website is now fresh and clean, her dashboard views are either exactly the same, or simpler than before because we pared back everything she didn’t need. We did a Zoom training to go through the changes and create a list of items she wanted for her reference document, aka WordPress cheatsheet. Going with the simplest option that fulfills the brief means she can focus on adding in her new books, posting tour dates and speaking engagements and writing blog posts. (Bonus for us: because the cheatsheet is for the basic WordPress backend, we can reuse it with other clients too).

2. Build in flexibility

Your website is more than just a pretty face. It’s a tool, and you should be confident putting it to work.

I rejoice every time I get the little notification from our hosting company that a client has made an update to their site. It could be anything, the notification doesn’t say, but I know they’ve added a blog post, updated an offering, edited a bio. And it’s just so gratifying to know they feel empowered to do that and to use their site as tool, and to know they are in control of their web presence. Dean of Hearth Place Counselling is a star when it comes to this.

We built this website when they were returning to work after a brain injury, and they knew they wanted to take it slow, start small, and leave room to build, grow and refine as they were able.

As we’ve discussed before, client training is part of our overall approach to accessibility, it was no different for Dean. They opted for video trainings so we could record ourselves and Dean could revisit the recordings whenever needed. We made a list of topics to cover, split the list into two sessions and made our recordings. We were available for questions by email and phone for a month after launch so Dean could contact us if they ever got stuck.

Since we launched the site, Dean has moved into offering training for other counsellors and so has added a page for trainings. They’re offering more and different retreat options, and so used the mix-and-match component library to control how the new information would be displayed, confident it would match the existing structure and style of the site. They added new modalities to their counselling practice, using the template we built for that purpose to ensure any new addition would appear seamlessly on the page.

3. Scale with intention

When we get into even bigger and more complex sites, it becomes even more important to plan for a logical and accessible backend from the very beginning of the project. With Asparagus, we new there wouldn’t just be one person making update, but a small team of people managing the regular task of adding articles and columns, creating new contributor bios and more.

To scale up like this meant we leaned heavily on the directive to keep things as simple as possible and as specific as possible. We made use of as many built-in WordPress capabilities as possible so that team members who were already familiar with WordPress would see a dashboard they recognized (it also saves budget to use what’s available to us before turning to custom code). When we hit the end of the built-in functions, we extended them with our custom set-up designed to match the team’s workflow, avoiding any duplicate content entry, using clear and concise instructions for each task, and writing informative error messages in case anything goes wrong.

The end result is a system that is both consistent and flexible, giving the team the freedom they want to grow and change things up, and the familiarity to make changes quickly and confidently. It has been so gratifying to see the Asparagus team make their site work hard for them and their readers.

All of this to say, we’ve got you. Your experience of your own site should be just as fulfilling as the experience you create for your clients, and we work hard to make it that way.