Honored is a nonprofit dedicated to recognizing and celebrating exceptional Pre-K – 12 teachers across the United States. Through its platform, students can express their appreciation for educators who made a meaningful impact on them, whether in their academic careers, personal lives, or both.
These stories form the heart of Honored’s work. By amplifying student voices and highlighting the influence teachers have on their communities, Honored helps create a culture of appreciation around the profession. Their program, the Honored National Teaching Award, spotlights and rewards educators who inspire and change lives.
As Honored’s reach and impact continued to grow, the organization needed a website that could better support its mission, showcase powerful stories, and make it easier for people across the country to participate.
The Challenge: Outgrowing Their Existing Website
Honored’s previous website created significant limitations, particularly when it came to making updates and managing content internally. Even simple changes required technical support, slowing down their ability to adapt to growth.
As the Honored team explained:
“The biggest challenge we faced with our previous website was the backend setup. Our entire website was coded, and it was hard for us to make even the smallest change. If we had a new page we wanted to add or a content change, we couldn’t do most of this ourselves. Additionally, we wanted our website to have a more energized feel to it, design-wise.”
This combination of technical limitations and the desire for a more modern design made it clear that a full rebuild (not just incremental improvements) would be necessary.
Goals for the New Honored.org Website
From the outset, the goal was to create a website that not only reflected the energy and impact of Honored’s mission but also gave their internal team the tools they needed to manage and grow the platform independently. The redesign needed to balance visual storytelling with practical functionality, ensuring the site could evolve alongside the organization.
As Honored’s programs expanded and more stories were submitted from across the country, it became increasingly important that their website could support both their operational needs and their long-term vision. This meant creating a site that felt modern and inspiring to visitors while also being flexible and intuitive behind the scenes.
As Hannah from the Honored team explained:
“We wanted to re-energize the website, add a few new landing pages for additional content, and update the backend so we could have more customization ability to make changes on our end.”
So the objectives of the redesign project were threefold:
- To give the site a new look and feel – Honored’s work is based on powerful personal stories, so the new design focused on a clean, modern, and welcoming experience that better captures their impact while improving usability and helping visitors quickly understand their mission and explore the stories at its heart.
- To add new landing pages and content opportunities to the site – As Honored grew, they needed more flexibility to share updates and initiatives, leading to new landing pages and content structures that better supported storytelling and encouraged nominations.
- Giving the Honored team more power over their website – We needed to give the Honored team the ability to manage their own content without relying on developers by utilizing a more intuitive backend that makes updates quick and easy.
Rebuilding the Site from the Ground Up with Divi 5
To best address all the concerns, the new website was built from scratch using the most recent version of the Divi visual builder, Divi 5.
The latest version of the platform represents a significant architectural shift from previous versions, with Divi 5 providing a faster, more agile design platform. Although the new framework has provided tools for more advanced customization, it has also introduced new challenges for the development process, as the tools are still evolving.
The decision to use the Divi platform has enabled the company to develop a platform that provides a contemporary design and a backend system that lets the Honored team manage their content without relying on developers.
Developer Allie Smith described her experience working with the new framework:
“I’m a fan of Divi 5. It’s faster, cleaner, and offers a lot more developer-oriented settings. During the development of the Honored site there were a few quirks, mostly because Elegant Themes was still pushing updates almost daily, which made things a little unpredictable. But overall, it’s a great upgrade.”
She also noted major improvements compared to previous versions:
“Divi 5 is much faster when it comes to loading and saving. The UI is cleaner, and navigating modules feels more streamlined. There’s a bit of a learning curve with some of the updates, but the way Divi 5 is structured is an improvement, and once you know where everything lives, development moves much faster.”
“Also, Divi 4 often required workarounds for more advanced dynamic content, whereas in Divi 5 it’s built directly into the builder, specifically with the new Loops feature.”
“Divi 5 is much more viable for complex projects that require custom logic, dynamic data, and scalable layouts. Going forward, I won’t have to custom code or rely on third-party plugins for a lot of the things I used to in Divi 4.”
A Platform That Powers Their Mission
For Honored, the website serves as the central hub for their programs and community engagement. Per Hannah, “Our website is extremely important as it houses our program and initiatives. [It] houses The Honor Roll, which is the heart of our program in publicly recognizing and celebrating teachers. Our website also houses the nomination form, where students and families can submit their stories of recognition.”
The Honor Roll
The Honor Roll is at the very heart of Honored’s mission. It is a constantly evolving collection of stories submitted by students and families to honor teachers who have had a lasting impact on their lives.
Teacher Nominations
The website also hosts the nomination form, which allows students and families to share their gratitude for teachers and their recognition stories.
A Seamless Experience for the Honored Team
One of the most immediate changes has been the experience behind the scenes. The new backend has enabled the Honored team to easily and efficiently update the site’s content. The organization has also saved time and money by avoiding the need to involve a developer in the process. Per leadership, “The new website is seamless, and it’s easy for us to add content to the website. This new update saves us time and IT support funds.”
The Honored team is particularly excited about the new possibilities they have to react to new ideas.
“We are most excited about the ability to make changes on our end. This new backend helps us be able to update the website without any lag time between wanting a change! We are also excited about the overall cohesive, updated design.”
The revamped site will also improve the experience for users who want to learn about Honored or become involved with their programs. New and expanded content spaces will help users understand Honored’s purpose and impact. As Hannah said, “I think the new website provides more information about Honored through our blog, podcast, and reconstructed ‘What We Do’ pages that hopefully will lead to more nominations.”
A Collaborative Process
It is a significant task launching a completely rebuilt website, especially when working on a new framework. Working with Barrel Roll helped Honored make the process manageable and organized.
With the new Divi 5 foundation in place, Honored now has a platform built for growth and long-term sustainability. The rebuild not only improved performance and design but also gave the organization greater ownership of its digital presence.
“We could never have updated the backend to the Divi builder by ourselves! The Barrel Roll team was really responsive to our feedback and kept everything organized in a way that was easy to navigate.”
With a modern platform and improved workflows, Honored is now positioned to continue expanding its impact and making it easier for the community to recognize and celebrate outstanding educators.
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