Organization Background
The William Way LGBT Community Center has been a home base of Philadelphia’s LGBTQ+ community for decades. The Center offers a wide range of empowerment, arts, wellness, and advocacy programs for LGBTQ+ individuals across the greater Philadelphia area.
Among its programs is the Elder Initiative, which champions and supports the diverse community of LGBTQ+ older adults in the region. The Elder Initiative began as a separate organization, the LGBT Elder Initiative, founded in 2010 to focus specifically on LGBTQ+ elder programming. After nearly a decade of parallel work and community collaboration, the organization merged with the William Way Community Center in 2019, becoming a department within the Center and carrying forward its name in honor of its independent legacy.
About the Project
When the Elder Initiative formally merged into William Way’s digital home, its web presence hadn’t caught up. The existing Elder Initiative website, built on WordPress, was outdated and disconnected from the William Way brand. The goal of this project was to migrate Elder Initiative content from the legacy WordPress site into William Way’s Squarespace platform, consolidate years of programming information into two clean, accessible pages, and archive the original site so nothing was lost in the transition.
Creative Repute was engaged to handle the full migration, including content migration and formatting, accessibility and SEO optimization, URL redirect coordination, and content archiving. The project officially launched in May 2026, with both pages going live on the William Way site.
Our Approach
The project kicked off with a discovery meeting in March 2026. That conversation clarified the history and current structure of the Elder Initiative, surfaced accessibility priorities specific to the senior user audience (including font size and color contrast), and aligned everyone on the content strategy moving forward.
A key early decision was the page structure. Rather than replicating the old site’s multiple tabs and nested subpages, the team agreed to consolidate everything into two focused pages: a programs page and a resources page. Content that had been spread across sections for programs, events, advocacy, and about us was reorganized into a format that would be easier to navigate.
The Elder Initiative’s primary audience is LGBTQ+ adults 50 and older, which shaped decisions about font size, layout clarity, and overall readability. The team referenced WCAG 2.1 AA standards throughout the build and implemented on-page navigation links to allow users to jump directly to program categories like Health and Wellness, Social Engagement, and Elder Advocacy, reducing the need to scroll through a long page.
The resources strategy was also carefully thought through. The comprehensive Elder Initiative resource guide, originally housed on the EI site, was planned for migration to a broader community resources section of the main William Way site. To ensure continuity for seniors visiting the Elder Initiative pages, a direct link to senior-specific resources was preserved on the new Elder Resources page.
On the development side, the team worked with William Way’s IT contact to coordinate redirects from both the legacy subdomain and the original domain. Due to the layered domain management history across multiple hosting providers, including Network Solutions, GoDaddy, and FarmCat Media, this required close coordination and careful testing to ensure no traffic was lost in the transition.
Content from the old WordPress site was fully archived before any changes were made, providing William Way with a complete record of the legacy site for reference.
The Outcome
The Elder Initiative Programs page features the organization’s mission and vision, a full overview of current programs organized by category, and a direct link to the Elder Resources page. The Elder Resources page centralizes support services and links relevant to LGBTQ+ older adults, nested within the broader William Way resource structure.
The migration brings the Elder Initiative’s digital presence fully into alignment with the William Way brand, creating a seamless experience for visitors who come to the site through search, referral, or direct navigation from the old EI domain. Years of programming history are preserved in the archive, and the new pages are built with the accessibility and readability standards appropriate for the audience they serve.
This project reflects what thoughtful web development looks like when it’s driven by community needs: listening carefully, simplifying where it serves users, and making sure no one gets left behind in the transition.
Give Your Programs the Online Presence They Deserve
Start your project with Creative Repute if your website no longer reflects your organization, your community is struggling to find what they need, and it’s time to bring everything into one clear, accessible place.
