SMC Intranet

Objective: Replace an aging portal

Southwestern Michigan College, in Dowagiac, ran its internal portal on Liferay, an aging enterprise platform that was hard for staff to keep current. Students and staff relied on it for news, documents, and resources, and the college needed a modern intranet that worked with its login system, was accessible to everyone, and was easy for departments to maintain.

Web Ascender reviewed the existing portal and the college’s content process in depth, then rebuilt it from the ground up on WordPress as the SMC Intranet, with two custom plugins written for Southwestern Michigan College’s unique setup.

What Web Ascender Did

A custom single sign-on and LDAP plugin

Off-the-shelf login plugins didn’t fit how Southwestern Michigan College’s identity system works, so we wrote our own.

• One college login - the plugin connects the intranet to the college’s central identity server using CAS and SAML, built alongside the college’s IT team
• Clean sign-in and sign-out - login and logout handoffs that work with the college’s identity system, so students and staff never manage a separate password
• Accounts that manage themselves - the same plugin syncs accounts from the college’s LDAP directory on a schedule, so new and departing people are handled without manual account work

Roles and permissions

• The right content for the right people - a role and permission model that controls who can see and edit each area, with permissions on custom content types
• Department document libraries - folder-based organization with document and PDF support, so departments manage their own files

A custom announcements emailer plugin

• Targeted mass email - a custom WordPress plugin for sending announcements to students and staff, with audience targeting and flags for which announcements go out by email
• Priority announcements - urgent messages surface first on the intranet
• Built to send at scale - branded HTML emails sent in the background on a schedule, with unsubscribe handling, tested with progressively larger audiences before launch
• Maintained like a product - automatic updates from our code repository, and documentation in the intranet’s knowledge base

An accessible custom theme

• Designed for everyone - navigation tested against color-blindness variations, an accessible mobile menu, and contrast-checked link and header colors
• Easy to find things - tuned site search and results, a news and blog area, and reusable page layouts content editors can work with

Training, content help, and launch

• Ready for staff to run - a training video, a site manual, and knowledge-base documentation, plus hands-on content and accessibility help throughout the build
• Launch and beyond - hosting, security, and firewall setup, a go-live checklist, post-launch support, and a follow-on phase of improvements

The Outcome

The SMC Intranet launched for Southwestern Michigan College in July 2025, on time and on budget, five months after kickoff. Moving off the legacy portal cut the college’s monthly costs by more than 90%, and day-to-day management now sits with the college’s own staff. Students and staff sign in with their college login, accounts stay in sync with the directory automatically, each department manages its own content, and the college can reach exactly the right people with an announcement in minutes.