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Late 2025 we were approached by National Youth Council of Ireland, about inheriting their collection of WordPress websites and taking over the ongoing support, maintenance and future development of them.
We were delighted to learn, in the week before Christmas, that we had been chosen as the selected web agency and got to work with onboarding the sites in the beginning of January.
Onboarding 4 inherited WordPress websites
The sites were being hosted by WPEngine, and there was no reason to change that – we don’t insist on clients moving their hosting when they start working with us. So we gained access to their accounts and worked out a strategy to manage the DNS changes through Cloudflare with no disruption to the websites or the client’s day to day operations.
We were also careful to be very efficient with our questions to their previous agency. Because we work with WordPress so much, there wasn’t much we needed to ask, but we wanted to make sure we understood a bespoke plugin they had, and the licensing of the other paid plugins so that nothing stops working as subscriptions renew in the coming months.
We inherit quite a few WordPress websites so working with a previous agency is nothing new to us. We’re respectful of their time and input, and sensitive to the fact that they’re losing a client, and that tends to breed mutual respect that makes the process go smoothly.
A cosmetic tidy up
Some time ago, NYCI had a rebrand and their website was given a quick refresh to tie in with that new brand. There were however, some little bug bears the team had about elements of the design which weren’t quite as they’d like them after the refresh, so our first job was to go through all four of their sites and carry out a cosmetic audit.
We gave them a presentation of screenshots, showing the places where we felt some tweaks could have an immediate impact on the site. This included closing up large spacing gaps, making font sizes more consistent, changing text colours for better contrast, and fixing image alignments.
We then put those tweaks in a spreadsheet with an estimate next to each one of how long it might take to action, for the client to work through and approve (and add anything we’d missed). They were really happy with our attention to detail in the presentation and the list, and signed off all of our recommendations, with barely anything to add. All in all this was a great start to a new working relationship.
It’s just what we were looking for and shows a great eye for detail.
The slideshow below shows some “before and afters” of what certain elements of the site were like before we made our changes, and afterwards.
This whole process, despite sounding thorough as it started with a presentation and went via a spreadsheet, didn’t take very long at all and came in well under budget, largely thanks to how much work I do on WordPress. So if you’ve got a website that you’re not completely happy with due to unfortunate gaps or oddly aligned assets, please do get in touch to see if we could help make it neat and tidy.
Additional WordPress Branding
With the cosmetic audit complete, and having gone so smoothly, it was agreed we should use the remaining budget to check through the sites for any improvements we could make to how the branding had been applied across the sites during the previous brand refresh.
NYCI felt that the quick refresh the sites had been given when they got their new branding didn’t full reflect the brand as much as it could. This was one of the reasons they approached us in the first place – as they’d seen our work with Gingerbread, and how we gave their old WordPress site a new lease of life when they rebranded.
Branding easy wins
We went through their brand guidelines thoroughly and found that their main site wasn’t actually using the correct heading font (Highway); it was using their body copy font (Poppins) for all text.
We were quickly able to add the new font and apply it across the site headings, which gave the pages an immediate lift. We then spent some time tweaking font sizes since Highway is a generally smaller than Poppins. After showing the client some examples of the changes on staging, it was agreed – to keep things as efficient as possible – we could roll out other changes directly to the live production site.
UX as we go
We’ve also updated some easy-win UX features – primarily making things links which weren’t previously links despite being things you instinctively click on – to enable a better user experience across the sites.
UX isn’t just limited to visitors though, so we’ve also given the team instructions on how to run reports for themselves, which they previously asked their agency to run monthly, saving both budgets and time going forwards.
Overall the suite of sites are have headed into the rest of 2026 with a much needed tidy up, a stronger look and feel and improved UX.
If you’re looking for an agency to take over the running and support of your WordPress site, or need a hand with applying a rebrand to an existing site as painlessly as possible, please do get in touch.
