Halifax International Security Forum

Halifax International Security Forum is devoted to strengthening strategic cooperation among democratic nations.

Halifax is an independent, non-profit, non-partisan organization in Washington, DC. They are recognized as the leading gathering of democratic leaders committed to global security and prosperity.

Every year, they host a 3-day forum that brings together 300 democratic leaders from more than 70 countries committed to advancing greater strategic cooperation to address the most pressing international security challenges.

Halifax had a bland and old-fashioned WordPress website that was at odds with their modern agenda. It was created using an off-the-shelf template that lacked the flexibility they needed, was difficult to update, and didn’t work well on mobile devices.

After experiencing a website crash during a traffic spike at a forum, Halifax knew it was time to overhaul their website completely.

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What we did:

Halifax International Security Forum website design detail

The Solution

The biggest challenge that Halifax faced was being able to update their forum in real-time. Information is continuously changing, including turning the live-stream video on and off, switching out speakers, adding press, loading new speaker topics, and more. Stability and security were equally important challenges year-round, especially during the forum.

Using WordPress, we created a custom post type forum page that allows Halifax to update the agenda as information becomes available. All of the updates are now facilitated through a drag-and-drop and fill-in-the-blank editing interface, allowing staff to add, edit, and remove information as needed. We also added a ton of new features, including integration with Salesforce, taxonomies, custom post types, photo galleries, advanced search, and donations.

As attendees and their staff often check the program information during the forum on their phones, the site was designed with mobile responsiveness in mind.

The new site helps Halifax advance its agenda: creating a safer world.

Drag-and-Drop Editing

Style new website pages quickly, easily, and confidently.

All of our website designs are created with custom flexible content blocks (aka advanced custom fields repeaters) to perform updates with ease- and ensure the design stays consistent and mobile responsive.

This functionality becomes critical during the annual forum, giving Halifax the ability to update the agenda throughout the day, dragging and dropping blocks as new items become available.

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Interactive Timeline

Showcase your history with an interactive experience.

Engage your audience with a visual representation of your timeline that has been designed to convey information in a way that encourages people to interact with it.

Halifax uses this feature to highlight and archive past forums.

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Logo Grids

Display important partners to help instill trust.

Logo grids are easy to maintain and keep up to date through a drag-and-drop editing system.

The editable logo grid allows Halifax to quickly update their partners and sponsors each year.

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Photo & Video Galleries

Showcase events and information in an organized and thoughtful manner.

Create a place for important visual content that’s easy for visitors to access. Add filtering and search to narrow results and to create a better navigation experience.

Halifax’s media library serves as a repository of their photo and video highlights that can also be filtered by year.

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