Why Modernize?

The starting point

The legacy site was WordPress with a 2018-era theme — the same setup thousands of small organizations still run today. It worked, in the sense that it was online. Under the surface:

• A fixed 1,100px desktop-only layout that forced phone users to pinch and zoom — most visitors were getting the worst version of the site.
• No accessibility provisions at all: no alternative text on any image, link colors at a 2.6:1 contrast ratio (the standard minimum is 4.5:1), layout tables, and a splash page whose only entrance was an unlabeled image button — invisible to a screen reader.
• An aging WordPress stack: a theme last refreshed in 2018, jQuery-era scripts, and a plugin-driven cart with data bugs (products charging under the wrong item name, buttons missing prices).
• No way to reach the organization: phone and e-mail were plain text you had to retype, and the “nominate an endangered site” checklist had no actual form behind it.
• Content debt: a Terms of Service copy-pasted from another organization’s template (their name still in it), dated 2018; events that had already passed.
• A 26-page A–Z index for the genealogy records — the site’s most-used content — that had to be clicked through page by page.

None of this is unusual. It is what a website becomes when it is built once and left alone for eight years.

Risk 1: Security

Outdated WordPress sites are the most common way small-organization websites get hacked. WordPress powers roughly 43% of all websites (W3Techs), making it the most-attacked platform on the web, and security firms consistently attribute over 90% of WordPress vulnerabilities to plugins and themes — with outdated components the leading cause of infected sites. A hacked site can serve malware to your visitors, host phishing pages under your name, and get your domain blacklisted by Google.

What modernization did: the rebuilt site is fully static — pre-rendered pages with no database, no server-side code, no plugins, and no admin login to attack. The attack surface that gets small sites hacked simply no longer exists, and there is nothing to patch on a schedule.

Risk 2: ADA compliance and accessibility

Accessibility is both a legal exposure and a real audience. Over 1 in 4 U.S. adults lives with a disability (CDC), and thousands of web-accessibility lawsuits are filed every year — over 4,000 annually in recent years by industry tracking (UsableNet), plus far more private demand letters, with small businesses and nonprofits regular targets. The Department of Justice’s 2024 rule requires state and local government sites to meet WCAG 2.1 AA, and courts routinely treat WCAG as the de-facto standard for everyone else. Meanwhile roughly 96% of the web’s top million home pages have detectable accessibility failures (WebAIM Million) — most organizations learn they have a problem when the demand letter arrives.

What modernization did: the new site was built to WCAG 2.2 AA — the current standard — and then verified, not just claimed: an automated audit of every page at five screen sizes (158 page-states), plus scripted keyboard-only testing. Zero violations. Every image has alternative text, every control works from a keyboard, and every color pair meets contrast minimums.

Risk 3: Mobile

The audience moved to phones years ago: roughly 62% of worldwide website traffic is mobile (StatCounter) — higher still for local organizations people look up on the go. Google indexes the mobile version of your site, so a desktop-only site is also a search-ranking problem. And Google’s research found 53% of mobile visitors abandon a page that takes more than three seconds to load — the legacy site served full-size unoptimized photographs to phones.

What modernization did: the new site is mobile-first, verified at 320 to 1440 pixels with zero horizontal scrolling, 44px tap targets on phones, and images automatically resized per device. Lighthouse scores 100 for accessibility, best practices, and SEO on every template tested.

What visitors actually gained

• A real home page instead of a splash screen with an “ENTER” button.
• One searchable genealogy index (573 family folders, ~22,900 names) replacing 26 click-through pages.
• Working, accessible contact and nomination forms — the old site had none.
• Clickable phone and e-mail links, organized navigation, and a proper 404 page.
• Every old bookmark and search result still works — all legacy URLs redirect permanently to the new pages.
• The organization’s brand — seal, tagline, typefaces — carried forward, so returning visitors recognize the site immediately.

The process

1. Capture — every page, image, and quirk of the existing site is extracted and preserved before anything changes.
2. Rebuild — modern stack, content carried over word-for-word, every questionable item flagged for client review rather than silently changed.
3. Verify— automated accessibility, responsive, and performance audits with a documented results report, so “accessible and mobile-friendly” is a measurement, not a promise.
4. Launch — static hosting that costs little to nothing, needs no security patching, and keeps old links alive.

Wondering what this would look like for your organization’s site? Talk to Parker Technology Solutions. And feel free to explore the rest of this demo.