The Challenge

The Archdiocese of Milwaukee serves hundreds of parishes and schools across Southeast Wisconsin. Their existing site — built on an older platform — had become difficult to maintain, slow to load, and disconnected from the tools their staff actually needed. Parish data was incomplete, events were hard to manage, and the site couldn't keep up with the Archdiocese's growing communications ambitions.

The team needed a modern platform that could handle a wide range of content — from Archbishop's statements to parish mass times to career listings — while remaining manageable for a small internal web team.

The Approach

Highland built the new archmil.org on Craft CMS, designing a flexible content architecture that could accommodate the Archdiocese's diverse needs without becoming unmanageable. The project included a parallel build of Catholic School Near Me — a dedicated school finder site running on the same Craft installation — giving the Catholic Schools office its own branded presence backed by shared infrastructure.

The team worked through an extended build and refinement cycle, importing parish data including mass times and service schedules, building out a robust events calendar, and developing custom features like a Rapid Download plugin for diocesan resources. Post-launch, Highland continued refining the design based on feedback from internal departments and the Archbishop's office.

Key Features

• Comprehensive Finder System. Parish, school, mass time, and career finders with Mapbox-powered maps, location search, and language filters. Map icons display at appropriate zoom levels, and the finder is accessible from a persistent popup across the site.
• Catholic School Near Me. A standalone branded site for the Catholic Schools office, built on the same Craft installation. Tracks clicks and engagement to demonstrate value to individual schools participating in the Choice program.
• Multi-Language Support. A built-in language switcher supports the diverse communities across the Archdiocese, with the ability to flag specific terms as untranslatable.
• Typesense-Powered Search. Fast, relevant search across all content types — pages, parishes, events, schools, and careers — with sentiment-based priority weighting to surface the most useful results.
• Node-Based Content Architecture. A hierarchical content system where ministries and departments manage their own sections through structured nodes. Direct ministry content, journeys, and sub-pages all inherit consistent design while allowing per-section customization.
• Rapid Download Plugin. A custom Craft plugin allowing staff to package and distribute diocesan resources. Users can download immediately or provide an email — with configurable verbiage per download.

The Outcome

The new archmil.org launched in early 2026 alongside Catholic School Near Me. The Archdiocese's web team now manages a complex, multi-site platform from a single backend — parishes, schools, events, careers, and news all in one place. The site serves as the central conversion point in the Archdiocese's communications funnel, with every social media post, email campaign, and radio spot driving people back to the website. Highland continues to support the platform through ongoing refinement and feature development.

Live Site: archmil.org