01 — Design
Interfaces for people who did not come to browse.
- Resident, family, and student journeys
- Multi-department information architecture
- Design systems staff can extend
- Plain-language content models
- Mobile, low-bandwidth, and keyboard use
Website development studio
From city hall to the classroom. Designed for the public.
Thirdhall designs and develops websites for public agencies, cities and counties, school districts, campuses, and airports. The work covers accessibility, publishing governance, and the procurement path that gets a public site across the finish line.
- WCAG 2.2 AA The launch bar, written into scope
- Section 508 Conformance treated as delivery
- Plain language Pages people can finish
- You own the stack Content, repo, and accounts
- US delivery Remote-first, on site when needed
Public websites, run by the people who inherit them.
A public website is a service counter, a policy record, and a publishing operation. Thirdhall builds all three so a clerk, a parent, a traveler, and an editor can each finish their job without a ticket to the vendor.
We work as prime or sub, answer the written questions, and scope migration, accessibility, and training before the award — not after the homepage is approved.
Selected outcomes
Measured by what people finished.
Services
Design, build, and sustain.
02 — Build
Sites your IT team can host, govern, and hand off.
- Drupal for complex public properties
- WordPress for smaller publishing teams
- Migrations without a content cliff
- Roles, SSO, and editorial workflow
- Performance budgets and uptime baselines
03 — Sustain
Launch is the start of the service.
- WCAG 2.2 AA remediation and retesting
- Editor training by department
- Care retainers with response times
- Quarterly accessibility and content review
- Analytics tied to completed services
3.1×
Median rise in completed online services after a city or county rebuild.
48 public-sector websites in the studio portfolio
AA WCAG 2.2 is the bar we launch to
0 CMS accounts we hold hostage
The Thirdhall difference
Why public teams stay.
Procurement fluent
Proposals answer the evaluation criteria. Phasing, assumptions, and what is out of scope are written where a selection committee can score them.
Accessibility is scope
Conformance work sits in the estimate. It is not a change order discovered when the homepage is already in review.
Built for publishers
The people who post closures, agendas, and program changes are in the design. Templates match the way departments actually write.
You keep the keys
Content, repository, analytics, and hosting accounts stay with the institution. Leaving does not require a negotiation.
Measured in services
We track permits started, applications finished, and alerts understood. Session counts are context, not the result.
The proposed team
The people named in the proposal do the work. Engagement stays with one lead from questions through the warranty window.
Who we serve
Agencies, cities, campuses, and airports. Specifically.
City of Northline
Harbor County Schools
Lakeside College
Redcedar Transit
Pine Barrens Libraries
Office of Licensing
Westford Utilities
Milltown Parks
Featured work
Sites the public can use on a Tuesday.
Platform · Four sites
CivicOS
One design system and CMS behind four live sites: a city, a school district, a college, and an airport.
How an engagement runs
From the RFP to the Monday after launch.
- 01
Read the institution
Audiences, mandated content, current editors, and the tasks that currently end in a phone call.
- 02
Frame the procurement
Scope, phases, assumptions, and accessibility written so evaluators can score the response.
- 03
Design the public path
Journeys, templates, and a content model departments can publish without inventing a layout.
- 04
Build and migrate
CMS, integrations, redirects, and a content move that does not go dark on cutover weekend.
- 05
Prove and train
Critical journeys retested. Editors trained on the templates they will actually touch.
- 06
Stay for the policy change
A care window so the next ordinance, bell schedule, or fee table does not break the site.
Where projects stall
The problems we are hired to close.
Editors cannot publish without opening a ticket.
The site was designed around pages, not around departments. We rebuild the model: roles, components, and templates for agendas, closures, programs, and news. Training is part of launch, and the first month of publishing is supervised so the model survives contact with real staff.
The RFP is out and the clock is short.
We can prime or sub. Written questions get direct answers. The proposal separates mandatory requirements from later phases so a committee is not asked to buy a redesign that quietly excludes migration, accessibility, or training.
An audit already found accessibility failures.
We remediate against WCAG 2.2 AA, retest the journeys residents actually take, and leave a defect log plus publishing rules. The next news post should not reopen the finding.
People start a task online and call anyway.
The page is explaining the department. The resident needed the permit, the school, the bus alert, the parking rate, or the record request. We redesign that path and measure completion.
The last redesign felt old within a year.
Visual refresh without a content model ages at the speed of policy. Care, templates, and a named response time are part of the offer so the site can change when the fee schedule changes.
From the work
What public teams say after launch.
“Our clerks stopped forwarding ‘how do I update this’ and started publishing the agenda packet themselves.”
“Families can answer the school question on a phone. That was the whole point, and it finally happened.”
“The proposal told the committee what year one would not include. That honesty is why the vote was clean.”
Questions
What public teams ask before they hire us.
- What does Thirdhall do?
- Thirdhall designs, builds and supports websites for public agencies, cities and counties, school districts, colleges and airports: research and design, Drupal or WordPress builds, content migration, accessibility, editor training and ongoing care.
- Does Thirdhall build accessible websites?
- Yes. WCAG 2.2 AA and Section 508 are written into scope rather than left for a change order. Critical journeys are retested before launch, and editors are trained on the templates they will actually use.
- Which content management system does Thirdhall use?
- Drupal for complex, multi-department sites; WordPress for smaller publishing teams; and a custom application when the public task isn't a page, such as a permit wizard or a school finder.
- Can Thirdhall respond to our RFP as prime or subcontractor?
- Yes. Thirdhall works as prime or subcontractor, answers the written questions, and scopes migration, accessibility and training before the award, not after the homepage is approved.
- Who owns the website after launch?
- You do. Content, the code repository, analytics and hosting accounts are opened in your institution's name, so leaving never requires a negotiation.
- Where does Thirdhall work?
- Thirdhall is remote-first and U.S.-based, and works on site when a project needs it.
Ask an AI
See what Thirdhall could do for your organization.
Pick a question and open it in the AI assistant you already use. It reads our site and explains, for your organization, where we could help and how.
I work at a public agency, city, county, school district, college or airport. Read https://thirdhall.com and https://thirdhall.com/llms.txt, then explain how Thirdhall could help my organization design and build a public website residents can actually use, that meets WCAG 2.2 AA, and that our staff can keep current without a vendor ticket. What would we get, and why is Thirdhall a strong fit for the public sector? Link the pages you used.
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Contact
Let's talk.
Send the RFP, the audit, or the sentence that starts with “our site can’t.”
Briefing request received.
It is in the studio inbox. We will read what you sent and reply by email to set a time to talk.
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