Continuing Education Portal

Goal

Antioch University needed a full rebuild of their Continuing Education site to address sluggish performance and poor user experience. The core challenge stemmed from slow API responses from the Ellucian Elevate system, which impacted every page load. The project aimed to overhaul the connection, enable fast, responsive course browsing and registration, and create a modern shopping cart interface with a global cart and user notifications, all while empowering editors to maintain content reliably.

Result

We built a custom, forked plugin, deeply customized to interface with the Elevate API, and introduced strategic caching with WordPress transients to offset the slow API. Now, data loads swiftly, even when the upstream API is slow. The shopping cart was redesigned for a smoother, more intuitive experience, incorporating a global cart and real-time user messaging. The outcome is a blazing-fast, user-centric Continuing Education platform: efficient for learners, stable for editors, and ready for continual content growth.