Sentient Media

Sentient Media is a nonprofit news organisation reporting on animal agriculture and its impact on people, animals and the planet. They were launching a new brand and needed a website to match. The old site had built up years of plugins, custom code and content, and it was starting to show.

Rather than reskinning what was there, we started fresh with a new theme built around WordPress's block editor (Gutenberg) and ACF blocks, giving the editorial team the flexibility they need for long-form journalism. Alongside the build, I did a significant tidy-up of the database and existing content, removing old plugin data and sorting out years of inconsistent formatting.

The site serves content in two languages, English and Spanish. We used and improved the existing WPML plugin and approach, meaning that existing content and workflows were unaffected by the new website build, but benefited from the vast improvements we made across the site.

The result was a much leaner site. After launch, Lighthouse scores improved dramatically and both page weight and database size dropped. For an organisation reporting on environmental issues, a lighter, lower-carbon website was a big win, and allowed them to unlock extra funding for green initiatives.