services Live
MoveOn
Mobile development, accessibility remediation and launch infrastructure for the redesign of front.moveon.org, the front door for MoveOn's nearly 10 million members. It launched with zero downtime and a Lighthouse accessibility score of 91, the highest in MoveOn's history.
- 91Lighthouse accessibility score at launch, the highest in MoveOn's history
- 0minutes of downtime at go-live
- 2 → 1platforms that read as one site: Elementor and Action Network
The problem
How do you relaunch a site for nearly 10 million members without losing a single action?
The redesigned site had to work on the phones most members use, hold up for keyboard and assistive-technology users, and look like one MoveOn even where actions run on Action Network, a separate platform with its own plain HTML and CSS pages. And it had to go live without interrupting a single petition or donation.
The answer
Two platforms, one MoveOn.
MoveOn's front door is where members find a petition, a call to action or a way to give. The redesign was built in WordPress and Elementor, but much of the action itself happens on Action Network, which serves its pages inside a plain HTML and CSS wrapper. To members, both have to feel like the same MoveOn, on any device and with any assistive technology.
I joined as Senior Web Designer & Developer to own the parts that decide whether that works: mobile, accessibility, the launch infrastructure, and the seams between the two platforms.
My role
What I owned.
- Mobile development across the redesigned site
- Accessibility testing and remediation, including moving JavaScript-driven interactions into CSS so they stay accessible
- Hosting architecture on Pagely, set up alongside the existing setup: the staging site, full backups and go-live preparation
- Elementor templates for the global header and the press room
- Every Action Network page wrapper, hand-coded to match the new site, with separate accessible menus for desktop and mobile
- Ongoing sysadmin and cleanup work
Under the hood
Accessible by default, not by exception.
Much of the redesign's interactivity came from Elementor's JavaScript. I tested it for accessibility, then fixed what failed, moving interactions out of JavaScript and into CSS wherever I could. That way they work for keyboard and assistive-technology users and don't depend on a script loading.
I also built the Elementor templates for the global header and the press room, and did the mobile development across the rest of the site.
Going live
The hardest part was the seam.
Action Network pages can't run the new site's Elementor menu, so every wrapper had to rebuild it by hand in HTML and CSS. I coded all of them, with separate desktop and mobile menus and a small script that makes the mobile menu work and stay accessible. Members move from a MoveOn page to an action without noticing the switch.
For launch, I set up the hosting architecture on Pagely alongside the existing setup: a staging site, full backups and a go-live plan. The redesign launched with zero downtime and a Lighthouse accessibility score of 91, the highest in MoveOn's history. I've stayed on for the sysadmin and cleanup work that keeps it running well.
