How it connects

One network, four ways of building

FAS.org runs on WordPress. Heat Agenda and the Center for Regulatory Ingenuity are hand-built static sites, and Essential Data runs on its own server. A WordPress template alone can't give them shared navigation.

The network bar

The thin bar at the very top of this page is the proposal for RFP item C's "consistent navigation between microsites and FAS.org". It's one small component, kept on fas.org, that every site loads with a single line. FAS edits the list of sites in one place, and every site updates.

<script type="module" src="https://fas.org/network/bar.js"></script>
<fas-network-bar current="heat"></fas-network-bar>

Proposed, not live. Each site keeps its own design below the bar.

The microsite template

New microsites are built in WordPress from a template: their own name and accent colour, their own short menu, the network bar on top, and FAS's publications pulled in by topic, so a microsite's reading list updates when FAS publishes.

Launched by staff from the template, with no developer
Accent picked from the five issue colours, at AA
Publications by topic, from the same curated terms
Optional: one search across FAS.org and every microsite

Design note We'd confirm in discovery who builds and deploys the static sites today, and whether new microsites should be WordPress (our recommendation) or static. Either way the network bar works the same.