XQ Institute leads a national movement to rethink high school education in America. They work with educators, students, families, and policymakers.
Their work matters.
Their website needed to keep up.
XQ came to us with a site built using Timber, a custom WordPress framework designed for developers who want complete control over site architecture. It looked stylish and worked for the agency that built it, but XQ’s team is full of brilliant educators, not web developers who regularly manage complex code.
The site setup was like a house of cards. Each page had been hard-coded with unique dependencies. Change one thing and other areas broke. Outdated plugins were causing cascading issues. The blog relied on a confusing tagging structure that made content hard to find. Every WordPress security patch was unnerving.
For a team managing national education initiatives, it wasn’t sustainable.
XQ’s renewal didn’t start from scratch. We rebuilt a more user-friendly foundation, and then refreshed the design. This preserved their content and SEO work while fixing the deeper-seeded problems.
We started by reviewing the top 100 most-visited pages. Most were blog posts. This was where much of XQ’s SEO authority lived and we preserved it carefully throughout this process.
We eliminated the Timber framework entirely and rebuilt everything in Elementor. We cleaned up the outdated plugins causing those cascading failures. This gave XQ a stable base where updates became predictable instead of anxiety-inducing.
XQ had a massive blog archive. They told us what they wanted to keep and we made some changes while preserving both traditional SEO and AI search visibility. We renamed it to Perspectives and restructured the navigation for easier browsing. Kristen restyled the header and footer to match the XQ ecosystem while keeping their brand identity intact. The primary dark green color and hover states stuck around, just with a more polished look like their XQ Competency Navigator.
XQ was using custom post types for Resources + Tools, Board Members, and Schools + Partners, but they weren’t functioning as reusable templates on Timber. The backend was cluttered with outdated, unused fields that made it confusing to add content. We created proper Elementor templates that let XQ’s team add new content without touching code. We also cleaned up those confusing fields, keeping only what was necessary and making it clear where to add information.
For Schools + Partners, XQ decided on one flexible template that handles most schools while allowing custom layouts when needed, like the DC + XQ page.
The site looked largely the same at this point, but was much easier to manage.
The transformation gave XQ a stable foundation that supports their mission to rethink high school education. The team now shares their insights, tools, and partnerships with educators nationwide without website obstacles getting in the way.
They also get more peace of mind:
We’ve become their go-to website support team across their growing collection of education-focused web properties. It’s an ongoing project focused on stability and consistency as XQ continues their important work with schools and districts nationwide.
Not every website needs to start from scratch. Sometimes the smartest move is rebuilding on a stable foundation while keeping what works. If your team is fighting with your website, that’s a sign.
Learn more about our web design services and how we help education organizations build websites that support their mission.
Website causing more problems than it solves? Let’s talk.