Websites and platforms for schools and training providers

A school's website has two readers who want opposite things from it. One is deciding whether to enrol and needs the dates, the price, what a course actually covers and who teaches it — enough to commit money, and in some cases enough to commit to living in another country for a term. The other has already enrolled and wants this week's calendar, the announcement, the lesson.

Serve only the first and the site is a brochure that current families ignore. Serve only the second and nobody new arrives. Most of the work here is deciding which half of a page belongs to which reader, and being willing to publish the things a brochure leaves out — a fee, a start date, a real answer to what happens after the course.

The second thing these share is the point where a website stops being enough. Publishing courses, taking applications, tracking who has completed what, opening a live class: none of that is a page, and it is where a theme runs out. Some of these are sites in front of a platform. One of them is the platform, built once so it could be deployed for several schools rather than rewritten for each.