Role

Challenges

Our work with KCDS

Kootenay Career Development Society (KCDS) is a non-profit society that provides a variety of career development and employment services to the communities of the Kootenays. It has been our pleasure to work with KCDS over the last 6 years,  evolving the website  into a comprehensive intranet system. We have also assisted with the development of the logo, print material as well as marketing material for use by staff.

» Launch the KCDS website

KCDS.ca 2.0

Initially designed in .NET SQL, we have recently launched a new website for KCDS redesigned in PHP / mySQL / WordPress. Stealing all of the  functionality, interface, and structure from our original application, we rebuilt the entire intranet / front-end website  in a more modern robust language and database type. This also allowed us to take advantage of all the great WordPress features and “plug-in” a diversity of upgrades very easily, as well as providing a complete content management system that sits behind the site pages.

With this new website, the real magic happens with “dashboards”. For both clients and employers, once they register, they are brought to their “dashboard”. Depending on what services these users selected during registration, they are delivered targeted content based on their selection. For example, if a user selects  “Career Development” upon registration, in their dashboard there will be displayed several articles, workshops and resources pertaining to “Career Development”. These Articles, Workshops and Resources are feature rich post content with videos, image galleries and downloadable content. Employers can also post and manage jobs within their dashboard adding to the front-end job board.

From their dashboard, users can also register for a facilitator by filling out a quick questionnaire. Staff at KCDS are notified of these requests and assign each client to a facilitator based on availability. This has proven to be an effective way for staff to manage details of their clients, build relevant reporting details on registration and services provided, as well as centralize resources and client details into a single database.

For the staff at KCDS this new website has become a fun and exciting venue in which to publish content , For me it has been an exciting challenge resulting in a clear understanding of the deeper layers of the WordPress foundation.

For more information on building your own wordpress website, or developing a web-based intranet for your company, please contact me

Features

Expertise