USA Clay Target League
The USA Clay Target League is the premier clay target shooting sports provider for secondary and postsecondary schools nationwide. As a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, its mission is clear: prioritize safety, fun, and marksmanship. At the organization’s heart is a commitment to making clay target shooting a safe, affordable, and enjoyable school activity.
USA Clay Target Redesign and Re-Platforming
USA Clay Target had big dreams but a small content team. The group has multiple leagues and events in multiple locations often happening simultaneously. This means that USA Clay Target had 72 individual WordPress websites that required manual updating. Their team approached WebDevStudios in need of a reprieve. Our team devised a strategy to efficiently manage all their sites and streamline the content process. This project plan included:
- A re-platforming of USA Clay Target’s individual WordPress installations into a WordPress Multisite network architecture
- The customized design and development of a content hub (the corporate website) to broadcast syndicated content to their multiple websites
- A custom redesign to modernize the backend while creating a cohesive look and feel on the frontend
- Specialized features to support the network’s broadcast of syndicated content
Re-Platforming to WordPress Multisite
A WordPress Multisite network is essentially a collection of individual WordPress websites hosted within a single overarching framework. It’s similar to having a planned community with multiple smaller residences, each functioning as its own independent living space but sharing common resources and infrastructure.
While USA Clay Target owned multiple WordPress websites, its network was not built efficiently, seamlessly, nor set up to enable simultaneous integration of plugins and features across sites. Using the Multisite Network feature allowed the group’s content team to have a single content hub, broadcast syndicated content to any of their websites with just a few clicks, and create new websites, as needed.
This strategy empowers USA Clay Target’s admin to publish and broadcast content quickly. They can even specify which websites display selected content and which do not. This includes any type of content, from news stories to scores and events to advertisements. Now, with just a few clicks, USA Clay Target’s content team can easily publish when and where they want from one content hub, saving them time and money.
Centralized Content Hub Broadcasting to 60+ Websites
Editing content was extremely time-intensive for USA Clay Target’s editorial team, and they identified that early on as one of their largest pain points. Their content manager was required to perform repetitive tasks by logging into each of their 72 WordPress websites individually and making the same edits repeatedly.
After working with WebDevStudios, USA Clay Target will never have to worry about that again. As part of re-platforming USA Clay Target to a WordPress Multisite environment, our team custom-built a single content hub, the organization’s corporate website, to broadcast syndicated content to its subsites. This syndication process allows editors to write and publish the content once and have it appear on multiple websites without manual intervention.
In the context of a WordPress Multisite Network, a content hub serves as a centralized repository or hub for organizing, managing, and distributing content across multiple interconnected websites within the network. Think of it as a central library that houses various types of content—such as articles, videos, images, or ads—that can be accessed and shared among all the websites in the network.
With just a few clicks, USA Clay Target’s team can log into the content hub, pick and choose which pieces of content to broadcast, and even pick and choose which subsites will display that selected content. The content can range from news pieces to advertisements.
Overall, USA Clay Target’s new content hub within its WordPress Multisite Network serves as a powerful tool for content management, distribution, and collaboration, enabling efficient content sharing and synergy among its interconnected websites.
Custom Redesign Powered by theme.json
Before teaming up with WebDevStudios, the brand style of USA Clay Target was inconsistent and lacked uniformity across all of its websites. To help the group achieve a consistent and harmonized look across all its network’s websites, the strategy and design team at WebDevStudios decided to simplify USA Clay Target’s design choices. A major factor of this simplification was powering the entire network with theme.json.
Using theme.json file in a WordPress Multisite network helps keep the design and style consistent by providing a centralized platform for global styling, customization, updates, and adherence to branding guidelines. This contributes to a unified and polished appearance across all websites within the network.
The WebDevStudios engineering team programmed blocks based on theme.json variables so that each site could have a unique color scheme without the editors changing individual elements. This allows the USA Clay Target team to spin up a new website and change a few simple variables to automatically change background colors, headers, flourish elements, and more!
More Content Control with Custom Post Types
WordPress custom post types (CPTs) allow users to define their own content types beyond the default posts and pages. Essentially, CPTs enable you to create structured content tailored to your specific needs.
For instance, USA Clay Target requires sponsors to be featured on various websites within its network. To achieve this, our team created a custom post type called ‘sponsors,’ which has its own custom fields. This provides flexibility and dynamic display options. With the help of the centralized content hub dashboard, the USA Clay Target team can easily control the display of sponsors on their website.
So now, an editor can create, edit, and manage CPTs from the centralized content hub, and edit the available fields.
Custom-Built Ad Block
While ad blocks are available in the WordPress Repository, the team at WebDevStudios custom-built one for USA Clay Target because the organization had very specific requirements.
The editorial team wanted to be able to place and add an ad block to any page or post, and by default, the ad would show advertisements based on the current site location. However, the team also wanted to be able to select an alternate location or manually add a Google ad embed code. Our engineering team made that happen.
The editorial team at USA Clay Target has customized control over the advertisements that appear on their website using the customized Ad Block WebDevStudios built. They can choose from manual code entry, location-specific entry, or automated entry. This flexibility allows them to fine-tune their advertising strategy and ensures the success of the nonprofit group’s advertising efforts.
Custom API Integration
The ClayTargetGo API is used to dynamically display various content throughout the multisite network. It powers filterable tables of awards, statistics, results, and much more. For example, the team page on each league site can query the API to dynamically generate an up-to-date list of teams and display them within a filterable list.
ClayTargetGo API integration facilitates seamless communication and data exchange between the centralized content hub and the network’s subsites. This enables USA Clay Target’s content team to streamline processes. From conference standings to tournament scores, data and reports can be pulled from the ClayTargetGo API and displayed on the relevant subsites and pages according to the requirements of the content team.