WordPress Websites for Schools and Academies
Forget proprietary software and lengthy meetings with expensive consultants. We build your school website so that you can focus on building your school.
Ultimately Better have years of experience building fast, secure WordPress websites for schools and academies across the country.
We take the hassle out of:
- giving you quick, simple access to update parents and guardians on school news and events
- meeting Ofsted’s lengthy school website requirements
- satisfying governor’s and parent’s needs without compromising on quality
- keeping your site and visitor data secure
Feedback from schools
[…] Jem provided us with really useful design ideas which helped us give her an idea of what we wanted. Jem very quickly produced a new website, which looks very impressive. Jem then provided an excellent training session which enabled us to add our own pages and menus. Throughout the whole process Jem has been quick in answering our many questions and her suggestions have always been very helpful.
We have found Jem to be extremely professional, helpful and supportive and we would thoroughly recommend Jem to any school looking for a new website.
Paul Edmunds, Assistant Headteacher
Blessed Edward Oldcorne Catholic College
WordPress website case study
Broseley Church of England Primary School
Broseley Primary School had their website designed and built by a “specialist” school website company.
Unfortunately the company’s specialty was mass-produced template driven websites powered by an old pagebuilder plugin. The result was a product that couldn’t be edited within the school grounds because of limitations caused by the internal firewall and slow page load speeds.
Working with the school in-house, we rebuilt the website utilising much of the existing design assets to keep costs low, producing a bespoke WordPress theme utilising the built-in Gutenberg editor, allowing for a perfomant frontend, a friendly, intuitive to use backend and a more accessible website across various devices and browsers.
After having numerous difficulties with another website designer, we asked [Utlimately Better Ltd] to provide some assistance. Jem managed to overhaul our website and provide a user friendly site that we are thrilled with. She is extremely thorough, and knowledgeable – which gives us confidence that we are getting the best care for our site. She has provided support throughout challenging times when we have needed information to be readily available for parents. All we can say is, we are more than happy, and fully recommend Jem.
Sam Aiston, Headteacher
Broseley Primary School
It’s not unusual for schools to struggle with their websites. Here are just some of the problems we hear about from our school clients:
- no internal IT support, reliant on outsourced or local council based teams which may be slow to respond to support tickets, or downgrade website requests as non-urgent
- limited internal knowledge of IT, websites and digital marketing – primary schools in particular
- competing views between teachers, senior management, governors, academy C-suites, parents and more
Ultimately Better specialise in solving these problems by:
- providing within the hour dedicated website support within school opening hours
- extensive knowledge of website and digital marketing best practice
- surveying the right people and consulting on ways of working which take into account a multitude of views with inclusive, evidence-based suggestions for reaching your end goals
More feedback from schools
We needed a quick refresh of our website, which is heavily used by prospective and existing parents, staff and pupils. We needed to make sure that our site was flexible to appeal to all our end users and showcased our school. Working with Jem, I was able to quickly turn my thoughts into a brief, and then into a final product.
Jem clearly knows what she is doing with WordPress, and her work showcases her considerable knowledge and no nonsense approach. I intend to use her again, when required, and would recommend her to others looking for a developer who knows WordPress inside out.
Matthew Setchell, Network Manager (SMT)
St Bede’s Catholic Middle SchoolSchools we’ve worked with
School website FAQs
Why should I pick WordPress for my school website?
WordPress’ mission is to democratise publishing, giving users freedom. We believe that this freedom – in both how you use WordPress, and how your website data is stored – opens up worlds of possibilities for schools and academies. Rather than locking your school into a complex, proprietary system and heavy long term contracts, we give schools the knowledge and the power to create, extend, & maintain their websites with as little or as much support as is required.
But will my data be secure under WordPress?
WordPress has a huge community of both employed and volunteer developers creating and maintaining the code that powers it. Lots of eyes on all this code means security issues – which happen everywhere – are found and resolved very quickly.
What if you get hit by a bus tomorrow, how will I access and maintain my website?
One of the advantages of using WordPress is that it’s the most commonly used content management system in the world. That means that there are hordes of developers, designers, content managers, digital marketers, SEOs and more besides all willing and able to help with WordPress websites. If something happened to your developer(s) here at Ultimately Better, you’d be in an excellent position to find someone new to help you take care of your website.
Can you train our school staff on how to use our WordPress website?
We deliver WordPress training to staff as standard as part of all our WordPress website builds. This can be delivered in house or virtually.