Key Takeaways
- Took ownership of a sophisticated agency-built platform, a dependency-injection core plugin, Twig templates and a 38-plugin stack, and made it maintainable without destabilizing what worked.
- Quarantined all customization into one functionality plugin, on purpose, so the original vendor's code stayed upgradeable and every change stayed findable.
- Protected the clinic locator, the page patients use to find care, by scoping performance optimization precisely: full caching everywhere else, none of it on the one path it interfered with.
- Ran every plugin update cycle the same way, tested locally, deployed only once confirmed stable, the discipline a healthcare site running HIPAA forms deserves.
- Rebuilt the Taleo careers integration around the employer's real vocabulary, 14 clinical specialties resolved with the client, rendered as live listings that never need manual editing.
- Gave the client self-service diagnostics into their own recruiting data, so questions about the applicant-tracking feed could be answered and routed internally with evidence.
Organization
Yakima Valley Farm Workers Clinic is one of the largest community health centers in the Pacific Northwest, operating a network of clinics across Washington and Oregon for more than 206,000 patients. The website carries the clinic locator, HIPAA-compliant forms, WIC program content and the careers system that recruits clinical staff.
Challenge
The site arrived as an inherited build: a heavyweight custom architecture, an extensive plugin stack, and a careers integration whose assumptions no longer matched how the organization's applicant-tracking system was configured. Patient-facing surfaces, the locator, forms and location pages, had to stay dependable through every change.
Solution
- A local environment reconstructed from the inherited codebase, dependencies restored, and version control made the source of truth.
- The yvfwc-functionality plugin carrying all custom work in namespaced PHP with compiled, cache-busted bundles per area.
- Performance configuration scoped by path, so optimization never touched the locator patients rely on.
- Patient-experience refinements across services, locations and program forms, and map interactions extended so the locator's map and list work as one control.
- The careers plugin rebuilt on the correct applicant-tracking field, with a live category shortcode, per-specialty listings and a JSON diagnostics view for the client's HR team.
- Four documented update cycles totalling 33 version bumps across 21 packages, every one tested locally first.
Results
- 100% of open requisitions kept current with no manual editing.
- 4 to 8 recruitment-marketing hours a month recovered.
- Cost per application on paid recruitment down an estimated 10 to 20%.
- A patient-facing platform kept stable through every update cycle.