Hoërskool C.R. Swart

A school with no digital front door

C.R. Swart's previous website had been abandoned, and with it went the school's entire online presence. Parents searching for the school found nothing — no contact information, no documents, no staff directory. Meanwhile, private and fee-paying schools in Pretoria like St Alban's College, Crawford International, and SA College had polished, professional websites that parents could navigate easily. Even other public schools in the region maintained at least a basic web presence through template providers like SchoolWebsites.co.za.

The school initially requested a WordPress site so they could manage their own content. But as requirements grew — staff profiles managed from a dashboard, downloadable documents organized by category, integration with their existing learning platform, and the need for a site fast enough to serve learners on low-bandwidth connections — WordPress quickly became a bottleneck. The school needed a solution that was both powerful and simple enough for non-technical staff to operate daily.

From WordPress to a custom static platform with a full CMS

We recommended moving away from WordPress entirely and built a custom architecture: Astro.js generates a fully static frontend that loads in milliseconds, while a purpose-built dashboard gives school administrators complete control over every piece of content. Staff members, documents, personal support resources, and page content can all be edited through an intuitive interface — and every change triggers an on-demand static rebuild, so the live site always reflects the latest data without any runtime API overhead.

The backend also integrates with the school's Learning Management System, allowing resource management to flow between the main website and the learning platform at learning.hspcrswart.co.za. The site went through multiple iterations as the school's needs evolved, and the architecture proved flexible enough to accommodate every new requirement. Its success led C.R. Swart to tender for similar websites for other no-fee schools in the region, following the same structure — a model that could scale across the Department of Education's network.