The client, Karen Iannaccone, designed, developed, and maintained a website for the Virginia Tech Center for Drug Discovery. Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University ceased the operations of a Percussion Content Management System in favor of a new system based on the Ensemble Content Management System. Karen Iannaccone does not have strong technical background and therefore requested a new website be created with an emphasis on three design goals: • Maintainability • Performance • Usability WordPress, along with the Avada theme, allows for a responsive and intuitive site to be designed, developed, and maintained efficiently and inexpensively. Karen Iannaccone requested we develop a WordPress website to allow her to learn through tutorials in a much simpler setting. Virginia Tech Hosting set up a sandbox environment where the team could develop and refine the WordPress website while not affecting the old website created by the client.

As a team, we went through the content of the old website and utilized a web crawler to determine all linking throughout the website. We created a list of web pages that needed to be migrated, and split the list of pages amongst team members. After determining the workload, we designed the website to allow for a better user experience. We delivered an entire website consisting of informational pages, donation page, and image galleries to deliver all of the old content on the new website.

Before the WordPress was launched, the client critiqued the website and provided initial feedback on text, images, page layouts, and navigation, which was corrected, refined, and resubmitted to the client. Karen Iannaccone approved the site and it was launched March 30th.

After the site’s launch, it was tested by third party users for acceptance and usability and by GTMetrix.com for performance. Feedback from test participants has been consolidated and given to the client in order to address any further revisions that can be made. The performance metrics will be analyzed and the website’s performance will be improved.