Larkspur Creative was approached by Red Mountain Group Inc. after their WordPress website unfortunately broke. They were referred to us by their previous web design firm, who had since closed. We determined that rebuilding on another platform was the best way forward and would future-proof their site to avoid the same problem again. It also gave us the opportunity to make adjustments that would give the client more control over their content. Their website is one of the larger sites we have worked on, as there was a lot of content and multiple functions required.

We’re very proud of the final result and happy that we were able to recreate and improve upon all the functionality that is very important to the client, as well as adding new pages and functions to support their business.

Unfortunately, there had been significant degradation of their old website over time due to many missed WordPress updates, out-of-date and discontinued plugins, and some missing images and assets. Their version of WordPress was 4.9.8, and the current version was Version 6.0.2. This made their website core 4 years behind on improved functionality, speed and security.

Once we had a look at the current state of their broken WordPress website, we determined that it would take around the same amount of time and effort to rebuild their website on a different platform as it would take to work through all the necessary updates on WordPress. We recommended that we rebuild the website on Webflow. Webflow’s platform does not require manual updating and there’s no need for plugins. This would save significant effort and cost going forward, and also ensure functionality and eliminate security vulnerabilities inherent to out of date software and plugins.

This is actually a fairly common occurrence for us when we are presented with a broken WordPress website in need of rescuing. WordPress is generally a decent platform, but it is notoriously difficult for the average user and time consuming to keep up to date - requiring constant maintenance and sometimes replacing plugins, apps and functions when they are no longer supported, and troubleshooting plugin incompatibility and version issues.

We typically choose to recommend Webflow for a few reasons. It is always on the latest version, updated automatically after being tested and without any downtime or manual effort required. There are no plugins to fiddle with - all the ‘required’ WordPress plugin features are natively included in Webflow’s platform (things like SEO/Metadata/localization/image conversion, etc). This means everything is streamlined, always compatible, and always up to date. And it’s great for us as designers since it gives us full custom control over the look and function.

Content Retrieval

While some of the content and functionality was no longer available on Red Mountain’s broken website, we were able to use the Wayback Machine to pull historical snapshots of their old website and recover lost data and assets. Once we had gathered all the content and reviewed the missing functions, we set to work on rebuilding the WordPress website on Webflow.

Interactive & Dynamic Map

The Homepage and Properties page feature an interactive Google Map, with pins for every property listing. Clicking on a pin opens a popup preview detail box with a link to the property listing page. We had to come up with a solution using CMS that would be easy for the client to use and capable of handling hundreds of property listings with minimal impact on page load speed. With testing we realized that the street address was not always reliable, so we opted to use Latitude and Longitude to place the pins on the map. The map is constructed with custom code using the CMS and styled with brand colors and custom pins.

Dynamic State / Region Dropdown Menus

The Properties dropdown menus automatically populate with States and Regions based on the CMS, so the client has full control of a curated list.

Listing Filters

We updated the sorting and filtering function on the State and Regions pages to work on-page, instead of requiring the page to reload every time a filter was selected like the old site. This makes the user experience more fluid and delivers results faster. We also added more squarefootage steps and separated out total squarefeet vs available squarefeet as sort options, at the request of the client.

Added Functionality

After rebuilding the old website, we added some new pages and functions to expand on it. We added a new Careers/Job Postings page that allows the client to post job opportunities via CMS. We also added the ability for the client to create new pages for Events, complete with a sign up form connected to Google Forms to capture attendee information.

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We look forward to continuing to work with Red Mountain Group in the future!