William Carey University had a custom-built and maintained CMS. But when the senior developer retired, the web program was left in limbo.
One developer was left responsible for a sprawling 1,600-page site, with a 10-year-old assets folder, thousands of broken links, and a manual search setup. Content creators across campus were eager to manage their own pages, but there was no system for them to do so under the old CMS. When William Carey had to undergo a random accessibility audit, it was time to find a new solution.
Hannon Hill helped break a huge migration down into manageable steps
Our team supported the developer at William Carey through porting core files, standing up the homepage and interior templates, and delivering a crash course in Cascade CMS.
Cascade CMS is built for freedom within guidelines
Since nothing goes live without the correct permissions, creators are free to take ownership of their content. Creators were excited to learn they could move or rename assets without fear of breaking anything.
Our tools enable governance that scales
WCU set up contributor and power-user groups with WYSIWYG-focused permissions and guarded controls, such as who can change banners and create blocks. This resulted in broad adoption and participation that kept quality intact.
“Before we got started, I thought it was going to be a technical nightmare. But once I saw Cascade, the worry just went away. I felt like a kid in a toy store.”
Granular permissions and approval workflows let content creators within each department own their own pages, without worrying about breaking anything. Creators now keep the website up-to-date with fresh content.
Contributors can make changes, review, move, and publish. Developers can work from the backend without needing to map the site in advance. Instead of broken links and dead pages, WCU’s page is clean and streamlined.
With Hannon Hill’s support community across Slack, GitHub, and chat, the team at William Carey can access help whenever needed. These resources mean that even a small one-person team can manage the entire website.
“It’s just me running the website, so learning that schools with one- or two-person teams were managing their whole website with Cascade was huge. With the Slack community and the chat response, even if it’s just me, I know I’m not alone.”
Mobile-ready
Out-of-the-box responsive templates aligned with a surge in mobile traffic driven by new digital ad investments.
Time back to the business
With decentralized publishing in place, the developer now contributes to branding and digital asset initiatives instead of being the bottleneck for every edit.
Web-first culture shift
Putting content on the website is no longer an afterthought. Content creators now work with the website in mind.
Streamlined website footprint
From ~1,600 pages to ~300, improving manageability while eliminating outdated files and broken links.
Accessibility improvements
Siteimprove scores jumped from the low 50s–60s into the 80s–90s after standardizing accessible components in Cascade.
Search that works
The old site had a manual search setup. With Cascade, WCU now has a functional, modern search, and complaints have disappeared.
“Before, my life was just the website. Cascade has allowed me to work on other projects across the university. Moving to Cascade CMS has been life-changing and career-changing. What we had before didn’t feel sustainable. This does.”