Case Study
Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight
WPRiders revamped the firm’s legacy site using Elementor, optimizing performance and backend code while preserving its visual identity. The result: a technically modern, reliable platform that honors the original design and supports long-term digital growth.
Last Updated: June 29, 2026
View
Case Study
Client Industry
Law
Annual Revenue
N/A
Project/Billing Type
Retainer
Client Website
Company Size
MSB
Project Timeline
3+ months
Overview
Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight, a prominent national public interest law firm, recognized the need to address accumulated technical challenges within its existing digital infrastructure. While their WordPress website utilized the capable Divi theme framework, years of development by various teams had created opportunities for improvement in coding consistency, performance optimization, and backend functionality.
The firm sought a comprehensive digital infrastructure enhancement that would modernize their technical foundation while preserving their established visual identity. Their objective was clear: rebuild the entire website using Elementor and contemporary WordPress development standards, optimize code quality and site performance, and implement industry best practices—all while maintaining complete design continuity.
WPRiders partnered with Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight to execute this technical transformation. Our collaboration focused not on redesigning, but on rebuilding: strengthening the underlying architecture while ensuring seamless visual consistency for end users.
The project aimed to deliver enhanced performance, cleaner code structure, and improved technical reliability, creating a faster, more robust platform that honors the original design while establishing a superior technical foundation for future growth.
Challenges
- Legacy codebase requiring optimization after years of development by multiple teams
- Backend functionality needs enhancement due to inconsistent coding practices
- Performance optimization opportunities from outdated implementation patterns
- Divi theme limitations affecting flexibility and long-term maintainability
- Need for modernization to current WordPress development standards and best practices
- Requirement to preserve 100% visual consistency throughout the complete technical rebuild
- Limited server environment access requiring creative data migration solutions
- Extensive content preservation: over 450 pages and 900 blog posts requiring careful handling
- Critical need to maintain exact site structure and all original URLs while
Results & Benefits
- Achieved Google PageSpeed score of 99+, delivering faster load times and improved user experience
- Increased overall SEO performance resulting in a 50% boost in Google SEO score post-launch
- Rebuilt key sections—Awards and Testimonials— for easier updates and better scalability
- Successfully migrated the entire website to Elementor while preserving 100% of the original visual design
- Streamlined content management workflows significantly reduce the time required for content updates
- Empowered non-technical staff to manage pages and posts through an intuitive backend interface
- Resolved all backend errors and replaced legacy code with a clean, modular architecture
- Established a robust technical foundation with maintained site structure and original URLs, supporting future development while delivering seamless user transition with zero visual disruption
Our website is often the first point of contact for clients navigating some of the most difficult moments of their lives. It has to work — and it has to work well. WPRiders was methodical, communicative, and found solutions even when the technical constraints were significant. We came to them with a specific goal and they delivered on it. We would not hesitate to recommend them.
Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight
Our Approach
Our collaboration with Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight began with a comprehensive discovery to identify underlying technical opportunities within a visually polished but architecturally inconsistent site. While the design remained unchanged, our mission involved engineering a complete rebuild that preserved every page, post, and URL while modernizing years of accumulated technical infrastructure.
Working without access to the original server environment, we developed alternative methods to extract and migrate data with precision and accuracy. With over 450 pages and 900 posts requiring careful handling, content mapping and structure preservation became essential priorities. We ensured the entire site architecture—including menus, taxonomies, and permalink structures—was replicated exactly to maintain SEO continuity.
Rebuilding the site on Elementor enabled us to significantly enhance content management workflows. We refactored the backend using clean, modular code aligned with WordPress development standards and eliminated legacy implementation patterns. Integration of Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) provided structured management for custom content types and filters—delivering flexibility for dynamic sections like Awards, Testimonials, and Team profiles.
Special focus was dedicated to restructuring the Awards and Testimonials sections, introducing logic-driven templates and reusable components to ensure future scalability. ACF facilitated structured data fields that enabled advanced filtering and consistent content presentation without complex shortcodes or third-party dependencies.
Following complete data migration and Elementor-based rebuild, we implemented comprehensive performance optimizations including improved caching, asset compression, and restructured critical rendering paths—achieving a Google PageSpeed score exceeding 90 and measurable improvements in overall SEO performance.
Gallery
Conclusions
SanfordHeisler.com now operates on a modern, flexible, and maintainable WordPress infrastructure that delivers the same trusted visual experience while providing dramatically enhanced performance and backend efficiency. The transition to Elementor empowered the client’s team with independent content management capabilities and eliminated the technical limitations that had previously complicated site operations.
By addressing backend opportunities, implementing clean code architecture, and optimizing SEO and load performance, WPRiders established a stable, scalable foundation for the firm’s continued digital presence. The result is a robust legal website that maintains complete visual consistency while operating with superior technical reliability beneath the surface.
Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight is now positioned for sustained online growth, with the flexibility to evolve alongside its mission of public interest advocacy while maintaining the high-performance digital infrastructure that supports their important legal work.
Have a Similar Project in Mind?
Discover how our expertise can benefit your project
