Design study · Community development corporation · Pennsylvania
Relighting downtown, storefront by storefront
A first website for a steel-town community development corporation, where the constraint that shaped everything is a two-person staff who will maintain it.
Concept only, responding to a community-website RFP. Facts are sourced from published local sites; this is not the official Sharon CDC website.
- Community development website
- WordPress theme
- Business directory
- Ask surface
- Two-person CMS
- WCAG 2.2 AA
Sharon CDC — open the working site
Case study overview
The problem
A community development corporation's most valuable asset is knowledge of the businesses and buildings downtown, and that asset decays fast — storefronts change hands, hours shift, a business closes. Publishing a 212-business directory is easy; keeping it true with two people is the actual problem, and a site that requires a developer for every edit is guaranteed to go stale and take the organization's credibility with it.
The approach
Native CMS editing is the organizing constraint, not a feature bullet: every surface a two-person staff will need to change is editable by them directly. On top of that sits the 212-business downtown directory and an answer-first Ask Sharon surface covering the board, programs, directory, and landmark facts. The historical material is handled carefully rather than nostalgically — WaterFire Sharon's concluded run is placed accurately in the past alongside the organization's current work, because a CDC that appears to be advertising an event that no longer runs damages the trust it needs. The world is Shenango iron and ember, in Familjen Grotesk and Chivo Mono.
The result
A 227-page build with a 212-business directory and an answer-first surface, WCAG 2.2 AA with zero axe violations across all 228 pages.
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