The Challenge
Safe + Sound Somerset serves survivors of domestic abuse and sexual violence in Somerset County, New Jersey, providing crisis support, emergency shelter, counseling, legal advocacy, and community education. Their website needed to serve two critical functions at once: be an immediate lifeline for people in crisis who need quick access to hotlines, shelter information, and safety resources, and house two large content libraries (a community resource directory and an educational learning center) with over 1,000 curated entries combined. Every design decision had to account for visitors who might be browsing on a shared or monitored device, under extreme stress, or with very limited time to find what they need.
Our Solution
FatLab built a platform designed around the needs of its most vulnerable visitors. A persistent safety button lets anyone instantly leave the site and clear their browsing history if they're in an unsafe situation. Two purpose-built content libraries help visitors find help: a 500+ entry Resource Directory spanning 20 service categories and a 550+ entry Learning Center with advanced filtering by audience, topic, and format. A professional accessibility toolbar adds text-to-speech, translation into 100+ languages, and visual adjustments for visitors with disabilities or limited English. The platform manages over 1,000 curated entries that Safe + Sound's team can update and expand on their own.
What We Built
- A safety-first design with quick-exit button, keyboard shortcut, and browser history management
- A 500+ entry Resource Directory cataloging local services across 20 categories
- A 550+ entry Learning Center filterable by audience, topic, and content format
- Professional accessibility toolbar with text-to-speech and 100+ language translation
- Over 1,000 curated content entries manageable by Safe + Sound's team without developer help
- 13+ flexible page layouts with a dynamic brand color system
Project Overview
Safe + Sound Somerset is a GuideStar Platinum-certified nonprofit serving survivors of domestic abuse and sexual violence in Somerset County, New Jersey. The organization provides 24/7 helpline support, emergency shelter, counseling, legal advocacy, safety planning, and community education. For decades, Safe + Sound Somerset has been a critical lifeline for individuals and families navigating some of the most dangerous situations they will ever face.
The organization's website serves a dual purpose that few other sites need to balance. It is a digital front door for people in crisis who need immediate access to hotlines, shelter information, and safety resources. It is also a large-scale content platform that houses two curated libraries: a community resource directory connecting visitors to local services, and an educational learning center with hundreds of entries spanning podcasts, videos, handouts, articles, and lesson plans. These two functions must coexist without competing for attention, and every design decision must account for visitors who may be browsing on shared or monitored devices, under extreme stress, or with very limited time.
FatLab built a custom WordPress platform designed around these realities. The site manages over 1,000 curated content entries across three custom post types, provides two distinct content discovery interfaces, and implements safety and accessibility features that go well beyond standard web conventions. This is not a marketing website that happens to have a resource section. It is a resource platform built for people who may be in danger.
Safety-First Design
Quick-Exit Button
The most important feature on the Safe + Sound Somerset website is the one visitors hope they never need to use. A persistent "Get Away" button is fixed to the footer of every page, always visible and always accessible. Pressing the button or hitting the Escape key triggers a dual-action redirect: a new browser tab opens to Google (providing an innocuous destination). At the same time, the current window simultaneously navigates away from the site. The browser history is replaced during this process, so pressing the back button does not return to safe-sound.org.
This is not a decorative safety feature. For someone browsing on a shared computer or a monitored device, the ability to instantly leave the site and erase evidence of the visit can be a matter of physical safety. The implementation handles both mouse and keyboard interaction, ensuring the escape mechanism works whether the visitor is using a trackpad, touchscreen, or keyboard. The persistent footer placement means the button is never more than a glance away, regardless of how far down the page a visitor has scrolled.
Accessibility for Vulnerable Populations
Safe + Sound Somerset's visitor population includes people with disabilities, limited English proficiency, low digital literacy, and high emotional distress. Standard WCAG compliance alone is not sufficient for this audience. The site integrates the ReciteMe professional accessibility toolbar, which provides text-to-speech functionality for visitors who cannot read comfortably, translation into 100+ languages for non-English speakers, and a range of visual adjustments, including font sizing, contrast settings, and a reading ruler.
This matters in practice because a survivor calling the helpline may be referred to the website for additional resources. If that person speaks primarily Spanish, has a visual impairment, or is in a state of distress that makes reading difficult, the ReciteMe toolbar provides immediate accommodations without requiring the visitor to navigate to a separate accessibility page or install browser extensions. The toolbar opens directly on the page and works instantly.
The Resource Discovery Platform
Resource Directory
The Resource Directory catalogs over 500 local service providers across Somerset County, organized into 20 categories that reflect the breadth of needs survivors and community members face. The largest categories give a sense of the directory's scope:
| Category | Entries |
|---|---|
| Mental Health | 134 |
| General Social Services | 78 |
| Youth | 71 |
| Food & Basic Needs | 68 |
| LGBTQIA | 67 |
| Hotlines | 60 |
| Housing | 56 |
| Medical | 53 |
| Legal | 44 |
The remaining 11 categories cover additional service areas, including employment, education, substance abuse, immigration, and disability services. Each resource entry includes contact information, service descriptions, and categorical classification. The directory uses a categorized listing template that lets visitors browse by need, providing structured navigation for someone who may not know the exact name of the service they are looking for.
Learning Center
The Learning Center is a separate content library containing over 550 curated entries spanning educational materials, survivor resources, and professional training content. The entries break down by format:
| Format | Count |
|---|---|
| Podcasts | 290 |
| Survivor Resources | 92 |
| Handouts | 87 |
| Blog Posts | 76 |
| Articles | 70 |
| Videos | 51 |
| Flyers | 29 |
| Lesson Plans | 11 |
The Learning Center is organized through three taxonomies that allow visitors to approach the content from different angles. The Audiences taxonomy (10+ segments) lets visitors filter by their role: survivors, educators, parents, teens, service providers, and others. The Topics taxonomy (90+ topics) covers subjects from safety planning and trauma to healthy relationships and bystander intervention. The Categories taxonomy classifies entries by format, distinguishing podcasts, handouts, and videos so visitors can find content in the medium they prefer.
FacetWP Faceted Search
Finding the right resource in a library of over 550 entries requires more than a search box. The Learning Center is powered by FacetWP (v4.4.1) with six configured facets that provide layered filtering:
| Facet | Type | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Keyword Search | Text input | Free-text search across titles and content |
| Audience | Dropdown | Filter by target audience segment |
| Topic | Dropdown | Filter by subject matter (90+ topics) |
| Category | Dropdown | Filter by content format |
| Checkboxes | Multi-select | Additional attribute filtering |
| Reset | Button | Clear all active filters |
All filtering happens via AJAX, so the page updates without reloading. Visitors can combine multiple facets to progressively narrow results. URL state management preserves filter selections, so a filtered view can be bookmarked or shared. The search results are rendered through custom PHP template parts that maintain consistent formatting across all filter combinations.
Technical Implementation
Custom Theme Architecture
The site runs a custom UnderStrap child theme built on Bootstrap 4.6.0, combining the component library's responsive grid and utility classes with a purpose-built design system. The theme's styling is organized across 38 SCSS files covering layout, components, page-specific styles, and utility classes.
A distinctive feature of the theme is the dynamic brand color system. Safe + Sound Somerset uses a palette of four brand colors (coral, purple, teal, and blue), and the theme automatically generates RGBA variants of each at multiple opacity levels. This gives the editorial team a broad visual vocabulary without requiring manual color management. Combined with a configurable Google Font system that offers 8 presets plus custom URL support, the theme provides significant visual flexibility while maintaining design consistency.
The theme's functions.php follows a modular architecture, loading 19 separate feature modules that handle custom post types, taxonomies, shortcodes, ACF configurations, and template functions. This modular approach keeps individual files focused and maintainable.
Content Architecture
The site manages content through three custom post types that serve distinct purposes:
| Post Type | Count | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Resource | 500+ | Community service provider directory entries |
| Learning Center | 550+ | Educational content across 8 formats |
| Event | 16 | Organization events and community programs |
Each post type has its own set of taxonomies, metadata fields, and archive templates. The Resource post type uses category-based organization, while the Learning Center uses the three-taxonomy system (Audiences, Topics, Categories) that powers FacetWP filtering. The Event post type handles Safe + Sound Somerset's programs and community events.
Combined with standard WordPress posts and pages, the platform manages over 1,000 curated content entries through structured metadata that enables both browsing and search-based discovery.
Flexible Content System
The theme provides 13+ flexible content layouts through ACF Pro, allowing Safe + Sound Somerset's team to build pages from modular components without developer intervention. These layouts handle everything from hero banners and calls to action to content grids, testimonial blocks, and multimedia sections. The layouts draw from a library of 192 ACF custom fields organized across 11 field groups, giving editors granular control over each component's content and appearance.
A global options page powered by ACF provides site-wide settings for brand colors, fonts, contact information, and recurring elements, such as the quick-exit button configuration and accessibility toolbar placement. This centralization means organization-wide changes propagate across the entire site from a single settings screen.
Plugin Stack
| Category | Key Plugins | Role |
|---|---|---|
| Content Management | ACF Pro | 192 custom fields, 11 field groups, flexible content layouts |
| Search & Filtering | FacetWP (v4.4.1) | 6 configured facets powering Learning Center discovery |
| Forms | Gravity Forms | Contact forms, helpline referrals, intake forms |
| Accessibility | ReciteMe | Text-to-speech, 100+ language translation, visual adjustments |
| Slider | Slick.js | Responsive carousel for testimonials and featured content |
| Live Chat | SnapEngage | Real-time chat support for visitors |
| Popups | Popup Maker | CTA popups for helpline awareness and event promotion |
| Image Optimization | Imagify + custom helper | Compression with PDF exclusion for downloadable handouts |
| Native Image Control | SMNTCS Disable Compression | Prevents WordPress from degrading uploaded image quality |
| Performance | Breeze | Page caching with Varnish |
The 20-plugin stack is deliberately lean for a site of this complexity. The custom Imagify helper is a notable implementation detail: it excludes PDF files from the image optimization pipeline, which is critical for a site that hosts dozens of downloadable handouts, toolkits, and flyers that must remain uncompressed and print-ready.
Security and Infrastructure
FatLab hosts the site on managed cloud infrastructure with geographic proximity to Safe + Sound Somerset's New Jersey service area. For an organization that serves people in crisis, reliability is not negotiable. The website must be available when someone needs it, whether that is 2 PM or 2 AM. FatLab's ongoing maintenance keeps the platform up to date, secure, and performing at its best. The infrastructure includes:
- Cloudflare CDN and DDoS protection
- Breeze with Varnish integration for page caching
- Imagify with a custom helper plugin that optimizes images while excluding PDFs from the compression pipeline, preserving downloadable handouts, toolkits, and legal documents at full quality
- Automated daily backups with off-site storage
- SSL/TLS encryption enforced across all pages
The PDF exclusion in the image optimization pipeline deserves emphasis. Safe + Sound Somerset offers dozens of downloadable resources, including safety planning worksheets, legal rights handouts, community resource guides, and educational toolkits. These documents must remain unaltered through the optimization process. The custom helper ensures that Imagify aggressively processes images for page speed while leaving PDF assets untouched.
Results and Impact
This project is a case study in what thoughtful WordPress development looks like when the audience includes people in crisis. Every technical decision on this platform traces back to a human need: The quick-exit button exists because someone visiting this site might be in physical danger. The ReciteMe toolbar exists because a survivor referred by the helpline might not speak English. FacetWP faceted search exists because someone looking for a mental health provider in their county should not have to scroll through hundreds of entries to find one.
The scale of curated content is significant. Safe + Sound Somerset's team maintains over 1,000 entries across two purpose-built content libraries, each with its own organizational logic and discovery interface. The Resource Directory's 500+ entries span 20 service categories that collectively cover the social services available in Somerset County. The Learning Center's 550+ entries provide educational content in eight formats, filterable across 90+ topics and 10+ audience segments. This is not auto-generated content or aggregated feeds. Every entry was selected, categorized, and published by Safe + Sound Somerset's staff to serve their community.
The platform's architecture gives Safe + Sound Somerset full editorial control over this content through flexible layouts, structured taxonomies, and a manageable plugin stack. New resources can be added, categorized, and published without developer involvement. New learning center entries automatically appear in FacetWP search results with the correct audience, topic, and format classifications. The site grows as the organization's curated knowledge grows, built on a content architecture designed to scale with the mission.
Results
- over 1,000 curated content entries across two searchable libraries
- 500+ community resources organized across 20 service categories
- 550+ learning center entries filterable by audience, topic, and format
- Quick-exit safety button with keyboard trigger and browser history management
- Professional accessibility toolbar with text-to-speech and 100+ language translation
- FacetWP faceted search enabling instant filtering across 90+ topics and 10+ audience segments