Our Work

Services Provided

Hop Studios loves building websites, but we also love building community. When those two things come together, we can’t help but get excited! So when Pleasant Community Circle came to us in 2021 looking to update their members-only HOA site, we were eager to help them.

What was initially created as an informational site for residents of the private community of Mt. Pleasant Lakeshore Subdivision grew to become much more personal over time. As more residents started sharing news on events and other happenings in their community, the website needed to grow with them.

When they got in touch, the site was running on ExpressionEngine v.2.10.1 and had been experiencing issues, making it challenging to work with. The frustrating interface and the increasing number of members posting caused the content on the site to become disorganized and confusing – the very opposite of a pleasant experience! To solve these problems and encourage participation, Pleasant Community Cirle asked Hop to implement a forum that permits conversation to be organized around categories.

We began by upgrading the CMS from ExpressionEngine 2.10.1 to 6.2.2. The site had not been updated in seven years, so this upgrade brought many improvements. Along with the CMS upgrade, we also upgraded PHP and several add-ons, including WYGWAM and Matrix, and replaced CE Image Sizer with JCOGS Image. Removing unnecessary or outdated add-ons, plugins, and extensions really helped improve the website’s performance.

And then we did some work to make it possible to use ExpressionEngine like a discussion forum—but without using tech-heavy forum software. By giving members a simple, clean, and usable interface, we improved the user experience of the site, and ensured administrators could easily maintain it while supporting increasing levels of usage. The unified community discussion area we implemented has sub-categories where people can post about resources, items for sale, HOA information, memorials, and community news. It feels great to put these tools directly into the hands of the community!

One additional lovely feature allows members to receive a notification when any new post is added, or just for official HOA announcements. This allows community members to stay on top of the latest information. It’s been lovely seeing how this little extra function has helped keep the community connected and in touch!

Most recently, we upgraded the site to EE7 this year. EE7 has focused on improving user experience, security, and performance, while also making it easier to manage and create content on the site. We look forward to continuing to ensure that the site performs well and that the user experience is seamless!