Kingsland Church is an independent Christian church and community centre in Colchester, hosting weekly services, local groups, a café, support services, and venue hire for events of all sizes.
The Challenge
The previous website had grown well beyond its original scope and site performance had suffered as a result. The team needed a modern, fast site that brought together service times, community activities, support resources, and venue hire, while pulling live data from the third-party systems that run the day-to-day operation of the church. Content updates also needed to be simple enough for non-technical staff to manage without developer involvement.
What We Built
- WordPress Rebuild - A performance-focused rebuild on WordPress, with the block editor set up as the primary content solution so staff can create and maintain pages without technical help
- Event Management Integration - A custom API integration pulling events from the church's external event management system directly into the site, keeping listings in sync without duplicate admin
- Room Booking Integration - An API-driven room availability and enquiry flow connecting the site to the external booking system used by the venue team
- Ecommerce Giving - Ecommerce functionality enabling donations to be made directly through the site
- Performance Optimisation - A deliberate focus on speed across templates, assets, and queries, keeping the site fast despite the complexity of the underlying integrations
The Result
A faster, easier-to-maintain website that reflects the scale of Kingsland's activity. The team can manage content independently through the block editor, while live event and booking data flow in automatically from the systems they already use to run the church.