The Challenge
The Town of Grove had no web presence worth mentioning — a scattered collection of PDFs, no central resource for residents, and no way for the Town Clerk to manage and publish documents without calling someone for help. The previous site, built on Weebly, was a dead end. They needed something built for how a small town government actually operates.
What We Built
A fully custom WordPress theme from scratch — navy and gold design system, Playfair Display typography, zero page builders. The entire visual shell is PHP-injected and consistent. Every page below the hero is managed directly in the WordPress editor as clean, class-based HTML. The Town Clerk never touches template code.
The Custom Plugin Stack
Two custom plugins were written specifically for this site — no off-the-shelf solution existed that fit how the town actually works.
tog-editor-tools forces the Classic Editor into HTML/Text mode only, loads CodeMirror 5 with the Dracula dark theme and JetBrains Mono, and adds 17 color-coded quicktag buttons for every component the town uses. Seven shortcodes handle repeating content — notices, meetings, documents, officials, highlights, CTAs, and buttons.
tog-content-manager (v2.2.0) is a full content management system built on custom database tables. Four admin tabs cover Meetings & Documents, Notices, Forms & Laws, and a Laws category added post-launch. Shortcodes render meeting minutes, agendas, notices, and categorized forms directly into any page. A custom Town Clerk WordPress role (restricted to the Town Manager screen, stripped of all other admin access) was built for the clerk, Sue Morris, so she can log in, publish documents, and manage notices without touching anything she shouldn’t.
Automated GA4 Reporting
Rather than expecting the Town Clerk to log into Google Analytics, a custom PHP script pulls GA4 data via the API and emails Sue a plain-English HTML report on the 1st of every month. She gets actual numbers — sessions, top pages, traffic sources — without needing to know what GA4 is. The cron job runs at 8AM on the 1st via cPanel.
Infrastructure
The site runs on NixiHost with Cloudflare DNS. DNS pointed to NixiHost nameservers, SSL via Let’s Encrypt through cPanel, HTTPS forced via .htaccess. Six role-based email accounts were configured through cPanel and confirmed live: assessor, dco, grovetownclerk, grovetownhistorian, highway, and kderitter. Google Workspace handles webmail.
Pages Built
Six pages total: Home, Government, Minutes & Agendas, Local Laws & Forms, Our Community, and Local Businesses. The Our Community history section was rewritten from original PDF source material — covering the town’s founding as Church Tract, the Hamlet of Swain named for Samuel Swain, the Shawmut Railroad, Fredrick Decker, and the origin of Swain ski slopes (Bina and Dave Robinson, 1947, $800). A vertical CSS timeline was built for this section. All content was reviewed and corrected by Town Supervisor Sue Morris — every email address, official title, and name verified against her handwritten feedback.
The Ongoing Relationship
The Town of Grove is on a $100/month service agreement covering 2 hours of support, 5GB storage, 35 email accounts, DNS/hosting management, and uptime monitoring. Additional work is billed at $75/hour. This is not a site that was built and handed off — AllSupport is the town’s ongoing digital infrastructure provider.