New Year, New Look

For many, a new year offers change and new opportunities, and Lyndon Institute is no exception, with 2025 bringing a fresh look to its website, engineered by LI’s Marketing Specialist, Javin Leonard.

“It had been three or four years since the school’s last update to its site, so a redesign was called for,” said Leonard.

Part of what facilitated the refresh was LI’s 2024 adoption of Blackbaud, a software package that not only includes the record-keeping functions of the school’s previous system, MyBackpack, but also includes a “Learning Management System” (LMS) similar to LI’s current LMS called Canvas, as well as its own native website building functionality, which Leonard used to construct the new site.

LI plans to streamline its digital services by replacing Canvas with Blackbaud next school year, which will consolidate all its functions into one software package, making life easier for parents, students, teachers, and staff alike.

Leonard explained that Blackbaud’s format primarily uses a WYSIWYG (“what you see is what you get”) template, though he still can go into the site and tweak its HTML code as needed.

It helped that Leonard was already familiar with Blackbaud before this year. “The marketing department had already been using Blackbaud for some of its functions, so that made it fairly easy to adopt for the site redesign.” 

Easy is a relative term, however, when rebuilding a website. “Originally, we were going to line up interns from Vermont colleges to tackle the project, including Champlain College and VTSU Lyndon, but it didn’t work out,” said Leonard. “So I decided to take on the challenge.”

Leonard dug in last August, with a goal of having the site go live in the third week of November. “We got it up in early December, so we got close to our target date,” he noted.

The refresh offers a much different design than its predecessor. Leonard said the goal was greater simplicity and a tighter focus in terms of its intended audience.

“The old website had everything but the kitchen sink. In many ways it was too busy, too difficult to navigate. Our retooled site is now focused less on current community members and more on prospective students and families, as well as local media.”

Much of the information—including schedules, calendars, document downloads—that was on the old site is now available to faculty, staff, and families directly through Blackbaud. Though there will be changes as additional content that supports the site’s mission to engage its target audience—such as information about some of its signature programs—gets added back in over time, Leonard noted that the current website is down to about a half of its previous size. “The goal was to get down to the essentials and rebuild from a new starting point.” 

Head of School, Dr. Brian Bloomfield, is impressed with the new look. “Our previous website lacked a clear purpose or clear audience. The new look is a more focused, more vibrant, overall cleaner website,” he said.

Bloomfield is also impressed with the process. “While on some level, this was a collaborative effort in terms of conception, I’m especially grateful to Javin. He was the driving force behind the redesign and was amazing this fall. He ran this whole project in addition to his regular duties, which is no small feat.”

The site can be viewed at lyndoninstitute.org.