About the Project

The First Generation Plus Success Center serves as a resource hub within the Student Equity & Inclusion Programs (SEIP) that provides community, connection, and support for undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Southern California. 

Announced in June 2020, USC has launched the First Generation Plus Success Center to provide support and resources for undergraduate and graduate students who identify as first generation, undocumented, transfer, and former foster youth. 

Plugins Used

These are the plugins used to make the site look and function the way it does and excludes any admin plugins such as User Role Editor or CMS Tree View.

Before and after

Method

The Challenge

Due to the speed with which the website needed to be built, the scope had to be severely reduced while many of the standard processes were cut from the development. This included testing and building additional functionality for events, blog-like functions, wireframe design, and rigorous testing. These risks were clearly communicated to the stakeholder who had the majority of the content in the form of 3-4 WordDocs already prepared.

Pre-built Functionality

As such, much of the design and functionality of the website would rely heavily on one of the Studio Press Genesis Themes included in our WPEngine package. The link to several options was sent to the client for final selection. From there, it was a matter of creating pages meant for static content, updating the menu, and populating the widgetized home page.

The Build

Due to the limitation of the widgetized areas of the home page, the client had to decide how to communicate their content based on the options available. This meant simply moving the widgets up and down on the page and updating links.

Project Risks

The key risk to this project was the tight timeline and unknown desired future functionality.

Risk – Timeline

The tight timeline meant that the scope of the project had to be reduced. The client was informed that any additional functionality desired for the website would have to wait in line after other projects. Depending on the possible requested functionality, a new project would have to be opened up. Otherwise, requests would be handled operationally. This could pose a problem for the client’s business operations.

Additional Screenshots