Creating professional websites for small charities.
Tough competition for funds in the Third sector means an effective website is crucial
What did Thames Boat Project need?
Thames Boat Project is a UK charity providing support and training through activities on the River Thames. Their existing website needed replacing with something their team could actually manage.
Charities typically run lean. There is no in-house developer. There is no budget for regular agency support. There is usually one or two people who need to be able to keep the website current, add news, update information and not worry about breaking things – without any technical background to fall back on.
The existing site was not giving the Thames Boat Project team that confidence. The challenge was to build something clean, reliable and genuinely manageable by charity staff, without unnecessary complexity – and to build it in a way that could grow alongside the organisation as its needs developed.
This was a foundation build. Not overbuilt, not oversimplified. Right-sized for what the charity needs now, with room to expand later.
What the site needed to do:
- Clearly explain the charity’s mission and work to supporters, partners and beneficiaries
- Give charity staff a platform they could manage confidently without technical support
- Be accessible to the widest possible audience – including those using assistive technologies
- Be reliable and stable with minimal ongoing technical overhead
- Have room to grow – new pages, sections and functionality added as the organisation’s needs evolve
Our approach
Project overview
A foundation build for a UK charity. Approximately six core pages. Clean, well-structured, accessible and easy to manage. Built to last and grow rather than to impress on launch day.
Design and structure
- Bespoke WordPress build with a straightforward page structure and clear templates throughout
- Approximately six top-level pages covering mission, work, involvement and contact
- Structure intentionally simple – new pages and content types can be added without restructuring the site
- Fully responsive across all modern devices from launch
Accessibility
- Accessibility built in throughout rather than considered afterwards
- Best practice for readability, navigation and interaction applied across every page
- Clear layouts and consistent patterns make the site usable by as wide an audience as possible
- The same clarity that benefits users with access needs also makes the site easier for staff to update
WordPress build
Bespoke build on our own custom starter theme. Purpose-built ACF content blocks give charity staff full control over pages, navigation and media without any technical knowledge required. The site is designed so additional functionality can be added later as requirements grow – nothing needs rebuilding to accommodate that.
Foundation for growth
The site is intentionally built to grow. When the Thames Boat Project needs a news section, an events calendar, a resources area or an online donation flow, the platform can accommodate it. The structure is already right. Nothing needs rethinking to add something new.
A charity or NFP?
If your organisation needs a website it can manage independently, without ongoing developer costs – we should talk.
Tell us what you need and we will build something that works for you now and grows with you later.
The results
98
Google PageSpeed score on mobile and desktop at launch
100%
Of content manageable by charity staff – no technical knowledge required for day-to-day updates
Zero
Ongoing developer dependency – the site is built to run reliably with minimal technical overhead
Accessible
Best practice accessibility built in throughout – usable by the widest possible audience from day one
Scalable
New pages, sections and functionality all accommodated as the charity grows – no restructuring required
0
Third-party page builders or plugin frameworks – built entirely on our own lightweight custom theme
Technical details
WordPress theme
Built on our own bare-bones WordPress starter theme. No inherited styles, no third-party framework dependencies, no bloat. Before any design work goes in, we run the blank theme through Google PageSpeed Insights and aim for 100 out of 100 on both mobile and desktop. That discipline applies to every project we take on, regardless of size.
Plugins
We keep third-party plugins to a minimum. This site uses ACF-powered content blocks edited in the Gutenberg editor. The default WordPress block library was disabled entirely – editors can only use the purpose-built blocks we created, which means every page is built consistently and on-brand regardless of who published it.
Accessibility
Accessibility considerations built into the build from the start – semantic HTML, keyboard navigability, sufficient colour contrast and clear focus states throughout. For a charity whose work supports people from a wide range of backgrounds, an accessible website is not a box-ticking exercise. It is part of the brief.
Content management
Pages, navigation and media all manageable by charity staff without developer involvement. The WordPress admin is configured to be as straightforward as possible – the team sees only what they need to see, and the blocks they work with are clearly labelled and behave predictably. Managing the site should not require a manual.
Why WordPress was the right platform for Thames Boat Project.
Charities do not need a complicated website. They need one that works, that they can keep current, and that does not cost them time or money they do not have.
The right platform for a charity is one that lets a small team do what they need to do without training, without calling a developer and without worrying about breaking something. That is a different brief to a commercial website – not a simpler one, but a different one.
WordPress done properly is genuinely well suited to charities for a practical reason: the open-source ecosystem means there is no ongoing licence cost, no platform fee, and no risk of the tool the site is built on being discontinued or repriced. The site belongs to the organisation, not to a SaaS company’s pricing strategy.
Wix and similar platforms look appealing for small organisations because they are quick to set up. The problem is that they are built around their own publishing model, not around the specific needs of the organisation using them. As Thames Boat Project grows – adds a news section, an events calendar, an online donation journey – it will hit the limits of what those platforms allow. WordPress will not impose those limits.
We also build to the same standard regardless of project size. The Thames Boat Project site runs on the same bare-bones, performance-first theme as a 1,300-page global software product site. That is not because we are trying to over-engineer a small charity website. It is because the right way to build is the right way to build.
