Bluescope was approached by Down Syndrome Limerick (DSL) in July 2020 to discuss a website redesign project for their website, downsyndromelimerick.ie. DSL’s existing site structure was on Joomla CMS but unfortunately had become a bit outdated. Although DSL was regularly updating their website, it wasn’t as user-friendly as other CMS’s on the market.
Together, we made the decision to move away from Joomla and onto WordPress. WordPress would offer a much more user-friendly environment as well as added functionality to the website.
Down Syndrome Limerick is a community of children and adults with Down Syndrome and their families. The charity is run by parents on a voluntary basis.
Over the course of development, the existing DSL website remained live while we developed their new website in a staging environment. By working closely with the DSL team, we were able to create a website tailored to their needs while keeping mobile functionality in mind. The new website includes mega menu structures to organise the many great services offered at DSL. A calendar of events is accessible via the main menu where users can view upcoming events. E-commerce functionality was also integrated into the website to allow for the purchase of tickets on many events, programmes, and courses.
Furthermore, users can become a member of DSL by filling out the online application form and securely pay a fee online to set up a recurring annual payment.
Before switching over to the new site, we ensured that all best practice SEO methods were in place, including necessary 301 redirects. Without these in place, Search Engines such as Google would not know which pages to send their users. The new site replaced the old site with minimal disruption and has been running smoothly since its launch in mid-April 2021.
