Learn how Scottish Historic Buildings Trust manage two distinct businesses from one WordPress Multisite
Scottish Historic Buildings Trust (SHBT) is an innovative charity that preserves many of Scotland’s most historically significant buildings, giving them a new lease of life. This encompasses both one-off projects to restore buildings and the ongoing day-to-day management of those buildings. As a result, SHBT’s web presence must address these two quite disparate functions of the organisation, and target quite distinct audiences.
In 2020, Pooka & Co started work with the team at SHBT to create a new online presence for the organisation. Through an initial “Discovery Phase” with SHBT, it was decided that the best approach to presenting SHBT’s work to the world would be to rationalise SHBT’s existing disparate websites into two main sites, with a consistency of look and feel to foster greater brand recognition for the organisation and its work.
Alongside our design partners, we created two distinct yet cohesive routes to present the brand. A core SHBT website was created to communicate the organisation’s mission, values, building projects, knowledge and skills at www.shbt.org.uk. In addition, a second website to promote and sell SHBT’s fabulous managed venues as a destination for weddings was created using a “softer” version of the organisation’s branding at weddings.shbt.org.uk.
To reduce the initial and ongoing costs of managing and maintaining these two complementary websites, as well as to encourage consistency of visual approach, structure and navigation, Pooka & Co decided to create the websites using a WordPress Multisite Network.
WordPress Multisite has been around since 2010, and allows users to run from two to two-million websites within a single installation of WordPress. This enables the websites on a multisite network to share both the visual look and functionality of that network. It can also allow administrators to log-in once, rather than needing to log-in to several separate websites.
All of this reduces the costs and overheads associated with maintaining and updating several websites. It gives SHBT the flexibility to launch additional websites quickly and inexpensively into this network, enabling SHBT’s online presence to expand alongside its portfolio of buildings and services, should the need arise.
Pooka & Co’s goal with any web project, is to understand the nuances of how a charity or business operates, and then provide the best possible bespoke WordPress implementation to achieve their goals. We build projects that allow organisations to plan for the years ahead, spreading the costs of development over time, and ensuring that teams have the training and ongoing support to be a success in the long term.
We’d love to hear about what you’re looking to achieve online, and get involved with your organisation, so please get in touch.
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