Process & Timeline
The working process: how content, structure, and live pages come together
Traditionally, website projects follow a familiar script: months of mockups, a big reveal, a round of feedback on static pictures, then a scramble to build the real thing and hope it matches. I like to run things a little differently, and a lot more transparently. The site is designed and built in the same place, in the open. You'll see real, working pages early, watch them improve as we go, and give feedback on the actual site instead of pictures of it.
The flow
The structure exists first
The information architecture and page outlines define every page on the site: what sections it has, in what order, and what each one needs to say. That skeleton is already built as working page templates in the CMS. This part is done.
You provide the content
Working from the outlines, your team gathers the words, numbers, photos, and quotes each page calls for. The content audit work already done on the current site feeds directly into this. The content checklist, writing guidelines, and testimonial guide are there to make this easier, not to grade you.
Where content isn't ready, we draft placeholder copy for you to react to. Correcting a draft is much faster than writing from scratch.
We drop it into the structure
As content arrives, it goes into the real site. The page goes live on a private preview link: a real URL you can open on your phone, tablet, laptop, share internally, and click through like the finished product.
You review real pages
Feedback happens against live pages, not PDFs. "The second section feels thin" or "this photo doesn't work here" — said about the actual page, at the actual size, on an actual device.
Browse the preview site anytime; that's what it's for. Feedback, though, goes onto one shared list through one person on your side, not into one-off emails. It keeps every note visible and accounted for, and the site isn't pulled in six directions at once.
Pages get progressively more polished
Spacing tightens, photography lands, copy gets refined, animations come last. Every page climbs from rough to finished over the course of the build, and you can watch it happen.
Early pages will look unfinished — that's the point
When a page first goes live it may have placeholder images, loose spacing, or copy that's still settling. That's not the quality bar; it's a page at 60%, visible instead of hidden. Seeing work early is what makes course corrections cheap. The alternative, polishing in private and revealing at the end, is how projects end up with expensive surprises.
Two things keep this from being confusing: in-progress pages are clearly marked on the preview site, and we aim to have at least one page fully finished before anyone gets a link, so everyone can see where the bar actually sits.
Timeline
Build & content
July – August 2026
Pages go live on the preview site and fill in as content arrives. Integrations wired up.
Testing & review
September 2026
Accessibility audit, cross-browser testing, final content pass.
Pause
October – December 2026
Year-end giving season: no site changes while donations are at their peak.
Launch
February 2027
Final review, redirects flipped on, go-live.
The pause is deliberate. Year-end is when the current site earns the most donations, and launching a new site into that season would put the biggest fundraising weeks of the year on unproven ground. The rebuilt site holds until the season is over, then launches into the quiet part of the calendar with room to settle in. January is the final-review and launch-prep window.
One date worth holding onto: content is complete by the end of September. That way the pause starts from "finished and resting," not "paused and incomplete," and February is a launch, not a scramble to remember where things left off.
What we need from you
- Content, per the outlines. The single biggest driver of the timeline. Every page that has its content is a page that can go live.
- Photography. Real photos of real people. See the photography guide for what works.
- Answers to open questions. Decisions flagged throughout these docs (look for the purple "Open question" boxes, all collected on one page). Each one unblocks a piece of the build.
- Coalesced feedback. One person on the MOWP side collects and batches feedback from everyone else. It keeps reviews fast, so notes don't slip through.
What you'll get back
- Live preview pages, continuously. Not a staging site at the end — pages as they're built.
- Scheduled reviews. Two progress reviews during the build and a final review before launch, on top of the informal look-whenever access the preview site gives you. The first progress review happens early, on a small set of pages, so the design direction is settled before it's applied everywhere.
- These docs, kept current. Decisions, structure, and guidelines live here and get updated as the project moves. If something here contradicts what you've heard, say so. One of them is stale, and we'll fix whichever it is.