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Getting Started

How It Works

1. You reach out.
Whether you're a new prospective school or a current customer ready for a redesign, it starts with a conversation. Contact us and we'll connect you with a member of our sales team.

2. Your sales rep walks you through the details.
They'll answer any initial questions you have about the product, cover pricing, and walk you through the contract. No design work happens yet — this step is just about making sure everything's clear before you commit.

3. Once you sign, sales will hand you off to design.
Your sales rep transitions you to our onboarding partner, who takes it from here and guides you through the design phase, step by step — starting below.

Step 1: Project timelines & roles

While we'll do the bulk of the work, there's one form we'll need from you before we can get started: a single worksheet that collects your template choice, navigation, colors, and logos all at once.

The average time to complete a new design is 2–3 weeks after we receive your completed worksheet. The total project timeline largely depends on how quickly you submit that form and respond during revisions.

Step 2: Complete the design worksheet

Instead of working through separate steps to choose a template, set navigation, and gather logos, you'll complete one worksheet at the start of the process that covers all of it:

  • Template choice — browse our template library, or talk with us to narrow down the options. Look at the type of content on each template's homepage, and consider your site goals (some templates include blogs or social icons in the header, others don't).
  • Site colors and primary navigation (exact spelling and order for your top navigation).
  • Header and footer logo files, plus any accreditation logos for the footer.
  • Whether you'd like Google Search added to the site.

A few things worth knowing before you fill it out: fonts, layout, and overall design are set by your chosen template and can't be modified. Logo orientation, shading, and where your brand colors fall are also set by the template — we use a paint-by-number approach, so make sure your branding fits before you choose.

Most of what you submit can be changed later in the CMS, including your logo files. Accreditation logos can usually be swapped too — except on select templates where they're hard-coded into the design and require a maintenance request to change.

Want to plan your site structure in more depth first? Our optional sitemap worksheet can help you map out subpages before you fill out the design worksheet — useful if you have a lot of content to organize.

Step 3: Coding out the site

Next, your project will enter our queue, and a developer will code out your site, complete with applying your branding to the template. Once they are finished, and the site has gone through internal testing, it will be provided to you for review. You'll have 30 days to submit revisions before you're automatically released to support, unless you approve the site sooner.

You will have up to 3 rounds of revisions to make any changes to the colors, top navigation and accred logos (the tool choices, layout, and design including fonts are set by the template and cannot be changed). You will have the ability to swap out the school logo files in the CMS after the site is released to you.

We will require your "green light" approval on the website before we can release the site into your hands.

Step 4: Release & building your site content

Once your site is released to you, we will transition you out of design and into the guidance of our support team where you will receive a training session to learn how to navigate your new design and our CMS. You'll be able to login to Site Manager and get started building content!

Your home page will contain locked tools, and if any of those tools automatically feed content (upcoming events, announcement database, blog, etc.), that feed will be in place. For other tools that contain editable content (slide show, content editors, pictorial announcements, etc.) you'll be able to update content to add your own content and remove our test content.

All interior pages are blank and ready for you to build.

Step 5: Taking your site live (the go-live process)

If you've been organizing and building your content as recommended, many customers find that adding content to their new site can move quickly. While every customer and project is unique, some customers are ready to go live within 2 weeks. 

We are ready to assist with your go-live process whenever you are ready!

Template maintenance

After you've completed your new website with our theme series, we want to help you keep making sure that it continues to be used in great ways to continue your mission and organizational goals. 

Once your site has been released to you for adding content, maintenance pricing goes into effect. Maintenance pricing is intended for you to be able to request updates to your site within the guidelines of the product and your specific template. Here are some commonly requested items that you can request through support for maintenance and could be subject to a fee:

  • Add/Update/Remove Main Navigation Items
  • Rebranding (updating colors)
  • Swapping in/out accreditation logos

All of our maintenance work for themes is done by individual quotes in accordance with our fee schedule.