Piedmont Triad Biz Hub | Custom WordPress Build

100 Lighthouse

4 Custom Post Types

The situation

The Piedmont Triad Regional Council needed a business development portal built from scratch. The site serves as a resource hub for regional businesses, with staff directories, business engagement programs, a newsroom, and a testimonial system. After the initial launch, a second phase added a standalone Digital Literacy Modules section with video courses and downloadable PDFs. RLF Communications handled the design. I handled the build.

What I did

Built the site on Kadence Pro with a custom child theme. Dequeued Kadence's header entirely and built a custom one from scratch with a three-row layout that collapses into a compact bar on scroll using an IntersectionObserver sentinel pattern. That sentinel placement was a real problem. Put it inside the header and you get an infinite flicker loop. It has to live outside the header element entirely.

Built four custom post types with their own templates and shortcodes, all registered in a standalone site plugin separate from the theme. The business engagement grid pulls content into a custom lightbox overlay. WPForms inside a lightbox is its own nightmare because the modern renderer doesn't initialize inside inert DOM elements. Had to move actual DOM nodes instead of cloning them.

Phase two added a Digital Literacy Modules system. Custom post type with ACF repeater fields for YouTube videos and PDF downloads, zero-padded module numbering from menu_order, and a two-column video grid with next-module navigation. All CSS in one stylesheet. All JS in one file.

Results

Lighthouse 100 on desktop, 95+ on mobile, even with a hero video. Stripped out every page builder dependency. All custom functionality lives in a single plugin, theme handles the design. Two major build phases, zero mess left behind.

Design by RLF Communications. Development and performance by Forcefield.

The situation

What I did

Results

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