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Christian Union Website Case Study: 12 Ministry Sites Merged into One Multisite
Christian Union develops Christian leaders at Ivy League universities and Stanford, and reaches adults across the country through Christian Union America. Its web presence had grown the same way the ministry had, one site at a time: separate websites for the national organization, each campus ministry and its programs, each with its own look, login and content. Students and parents looking for a campus, and alumni, donors and prayer team members looking for the national ministry, were landing on different sites that did not feel like one organization.
Skyfield Digital built christianunion.org as a WordPress multisite on a custom theme: a main site with the devotionals archive, The Magazine, Christian Union Audio and eNewsletter signup, plus a dedicated sub-site for each of the ten university ministries and for Christian Union America, each editable by its own university admins without touching the network. The separate ministry sites were merged into that one network and the new christianunion.org launched on October 3, 2025, seven months after the March 10 kickoff. The network today carries more than 3,900 pages and posts, including 187 devotionals and 94 audio episodes.
At a glance
- Who: Christian Union, a nonprofit business
- What we built: Custom design, Development, Site migration, SEO foundations and Ongoing support on WordPress multisite, custom theme
- What happened: 12 sites in one WordPress multisite network, 3,900+ pages and posts across the network, 187 devotionals in the searchable archive, 94 audio episodes with category filtering and Oct 3, 2025 launch date, seven months from kickoff in 7 months
The Challenge
Christian Union’s ministry is organized by campus, and its websites had followed suit: the national organization, ten university ministries and Christian Union America each ran their own site. Every one of them needed to keep publishing on its own schedule, yet the brand, navigation and content library had to become consistent, and thousands of devotionals, magazine articles, audio recordings and pages spread across those sites had to move into one structure with redirects from the old paths. Donations, events and email already lived in Subsplash and Virtuous, so the new site had to connect to those systems rather than replace them.
The ministry also needed campus staff to be able to run their own sites without being able to break the network, which meant a permissions model, not just a design.
The Build
Replace a dozen separate sites with one network: a shared theme and permissions model, a main site that holds the content library, a sub-site for every ministry, and integrations for the systems the ministry already runs on.
- 01
Design and information architecture
We presented three homepage concepts, refined the chosen one through unlimited design revisions, then designed the inner pages and a static page template for the long tail of text-based pages, along with a network structure that gives every campus the same layout with its own content.
- 02
Multisite build and migration
We built a WordPress multisite on a custom theme with ten university sub-sites plus Christian Union America and New York, custom post types for campuses and audio, a university taxonomy for tagging posts by school, and migrated the pages, devotionals, magazine posts and audio from the separate ministry sites into the new structure with redirects from the legacy paths.
- 03
Integrations, permissions and launch
We set up University Admin roles with restricted permissions, connected Subsplash giving and events and the Virtuous newsletter form, added Rank Math sitemaps and Site Kit tagging, then tested across devices and launched the consolidated network on October 3, 2025, handing over with management guides and training.
One network, twelve sites
The main site plus sub-sites for Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard College, Harvard Law, Princeton, Stanford, Penn and Yale, along with Christian Union America and New York, all run from a single WordPress multisite install on a shared custom theme, so every campus looks like part of the same organization.
Custom design from three homepage concepts
Three homepage concepts were presented, the chosen direction was refined and carried into the inner page designs, and the build is fully responsive on a purpose-built theme rather than an off-the-shelf template.
University admin roles
Each campus has designated University Admins who can edit their sub-site's pages, publish posts and manage contributors, but cannot change the network, theme, plugins or the shared header, footer and navigation.
Devotionals, The Magazine and Audio
A dynamic devotionals archive (187 posts), a contributor-driven Magazine and an audio post type with category filtering (94 episodes) give the ministry's content permanent, searchable homes on the main site.
Giving, events and newsletter integrations
Donations route through Subsplash giving, events run through Subsplash and the eNewsletter signup connects directly to the Virtuous CRM, so no custom donation or event system had to be built or maintained.
Search-ready from launch
Rank Math SEO with an XML sitemap index covering 2,311 URLs, Google Site Kit tagging, and 301 redirects from legacy paths such as /devotionals/ and /christian-union-audio/ to their new homes.
The Results
Since the October 3, 2025 launch the network has run twelve sites from one install: 356 pages and 1,840 posts on the main site and 179 pages and 1,576 posts across the sub-sites, with 187 devotionals, 94 audio episodes and a Magazine archive all searchable and filterable. Legacy paths for devotionals, audio and the campus sites redirect to their new homes, and the Rank Math sitemap index exposes 2,311 URLs to search engines.
Since launch the platform has supported new campaigns without a rebuild, including the August 2026 National Fast landing page, registration form and confirmation flow, and Skyfield continues to support the ministry with CRM reporting and campaign work.
By the numbers: 12 sites in one WordPress multisite network, 3,900+ pages and posts across the network, 187 devotionals in the searchable archive, 94 audio episodes with category filtering and Oct 3, 2025 launch date, seven months from kickoff in 7 months.
- 12Sites in one WordPress multisite network
- 3,900+Pages and posts across the network
- 187Devotionals in the searchable archive
- 94Audio episodes with category filtering
- Oct 3, 2025Launch date, seven months from kickoff
Key Takeaways
- The build: Custom design, Development, Site migration, SEO foundations and Ongoing support, delivered as one project on WordPress multisite, custom theme.
- What stands out: One network, twelve sites, Custom design from three homepage concepts, University admin roles, Devotionals, The Magazine and Audio, Giving, events and newsletter integrations and Search-ready from launch.
- The headline number: 12 sites in one WordPress multisite network for Christian Union in 7 months.
- Beyond the launch: 3,900+ pages and posts across the network, 187 devotionals in the searchable archive, 94 audio episodes with category filtering and Oct 3, 2025 launch date, seven months from kickoff, the signals that turn visibility into revenue.
- See it live: the new site is up at christianunion.org.
- Why it matters for you: the same build process applies to any nonprofit business whose website needs to do more than look good.
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