Case Study
Westport Land Conservation Trust
Freeing 1,800 acres of conservation work from a page builder that had become a cage.
[ Photo: Westport landscape — open fields, conservation land, or a WLCT property trail ]
The organization
The Westport Land Conservation Trust preserves and stewards more than 1,800 acres of open space, working farmland, and natural habitat across Westport, Massachusetts. WLCT runs active public programs — hikes, bird walks, youth programs, signature events — alongside a serious conservation mission that involves working with municipalities, landowners, and state agencies.
They had a WordPress site that was genuinely well-intended — good content, real effort. But it had been built with Divi, a visual page builder that produces complex, brittle markup and makes routine updates feel like surgery. Staff couldn’t manage their own content. Every small change required a specialist. The site was holding the organization back from owning its own story.
A page builder that’s hard to manage isn’t a tool — it’s a dependency. When the people doing the work can’t update the site themselves, the site stops reflecting the work.
What we built
A full rebuild on a modern block-based theme — clean markup, no builder lock-in, maintainable by staff. Every part of the site designed so the people doing WLCT’s work can also run their own digital presence.
01
Properties
Individual pages for every conservation property — trails, access info, character. The 1,800 acres becomes navigable and inviting rather than a list in a report.
02
Public programs
A custom post type built specifically for WLCT’s active events calendar — hikes, bird walks, internships, the Art Residency. Program listings that staff can manage without touching code.
03
Donation & giving
Integrated Qgiv donation forms, Ways to Give pages, and donor-advised fund information — built to serve the full range of how supporters engage financially with a land trust.
[ Photo: WLCT public program in action — hike, bird walk, or volunteer trail day at a Westport property ]
Worth noting
WLCT runs a visual arts residency program — artists in residence working on the land. It’s an unexpected and distinctive part of what they do, and the site needed to serve it. A land trust with an art program is a different thing than a land trust without one, and the site should say so.
Does this sound like your organization?
Your site should work for you, not the other way around.
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