For years, historyiscentral.org served as a cornerstone resource for American history educators, a digital hub powered by the vital Teaching American History (TAH) grant project. Its mission was clear: to empower teachers with the knowledge and primary sources necessary to bring the past to life in their classrooms.
However, like many older, grant-funded websites, this valuable resource faded from the live web when its funding concluded, leaving a gap in the educational community.
At Web Evolution Company, we saw not just a beloved archive that needed saving, but a perfect technical challenge. We believe that critical educational resources deserve the fastest, most reliable platform available. So, we undertook the mission to not only revive the “History is Central” project but to completely revolutionize its underlying technology for a brand new, broader audience.
We are proud to announce the return of a vital resource, rebuilt using WordPress and the JNews theme, and optimized to a degree that sets a new industry standard.
The Past Is Present: Relaunch of historyiscentral.org With New Technologies on a Modern Web Platform
A New Era for History and Archaeology News
The original mission of “History is Central” was focused on teaching. Our new mission is to bring the latest, most engaging content from the worlds of history and archaeology to the widest possible audience.
The new historyiscentral.org is designed to be the go-to source for everyone—from students and enthusiasts to professional historians—to discover the newest archaeological finds, scholarly debates, and historical insights. We believe that history is not a static subject; it’s a living, breathing field of discovery, and our platform must reflect that dynamism.
Our Commitment to Digital Excellence
Our company’s core expertise lies in ensuring that information is accessible instantly, regardless of the user’s device or connection. Older educational sites often struggle with slow load times, poor mobile experiences, and weak SEO—all barriers to public learning.
We knew that for this relaunch, speed, performance, and robust SEO had to be the absolute foundation to ensure this valuable new content reaches everyone it should.
We leveraged our deep expertise in web optimization to achieve truly elite results, showcasing the power of a finely tuned WordPress installation using the flexible JNews – WordPress Newspaper Magazine Blog AMP Theme:
| Optimization Focus | Technology Used | Performance Metric Achieved |
| Foundation | WordPress & JNews Theme | A robust, feature-rich base without performance bloat. |
| Speed & Performance | Advanced Caching, Image Optimization, CSS/JS Minification | Near-Perfect Scores on Google PageSpeed Insights |
| Search Engine Optimization | Structured Data Implementation, Technical SEO Best Practices | Highest possible visibility and crawlability for educational content. |
Blazing Fast Scores: A Victory for Education
For Web Evolution Company, success is measured by Google PageSpeed Insights. We meticulously optimized every asset and piece of code on the new site to meet the highest global standards for speed.
- Core Web Vitals: We focused relentlessly on achieving exceptional scores for Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). This guarantees that whether a user is viewing a dense archaeological report or a simple news flash, the site loads instantly and is completely stable from the first second.
- Mobile-First Indexing: The JNews theme was an ideal choice due to its native support for the high-performance demands of a news magazine format. We custom-tuned it for flawless responsiveness and lightning-fast speed on mobile devices, perfectly aligning with Google’s mobile-first ranking priority.
- AMP Implementation: Utilizing the capabilities of the JNews theme, we ensured that news articles load near-instantly on mobile devices through Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), guaranteeing that users get their history news immediately, wherever they are.
The result is an educational resource that doesn’t just inform—it performs. We have removed every technical barrier to learning, ensuring that the latest historical discoveries are just a click away.
We are proud to have powered this monumental revival. The relaunch of historyiscentral.org is more than a technical victory for us; it’s a commitment to ensuring that valuable knowledge is delivered through a seamless, best-in-class digital experience.
Explore the fastest source for history and archaeology news today and experience the difference that world-class web performance makes!
More on the Technology We Used
When we at Web Evolution Company committed to reviving historyiscentral.org, we weren’t just bringing back a domain; we were setting out to build a digital content platform that could redefine performance standards for educational news.
This required a strategic, best-in-class approach to our technology stack. Here is a deeper dive into the tools and techniques we used to achieve elite speed and top-tier search visibility.
WordPress: The Powerful Foundation
For a dynamic site focused on delivering daily news and extensive educational articles in history and archaeology, there is no better choice than WordPress. As the world’s leading Content Management System (CMS), it provides the flexibility, vast ecosystem, and user-friendly interface needed for constant content updates.
Our optimization work began here. We used a lean, minimal installation and configured WordPress to handle caching at multiple levels, ensuring that the heavy lifting of generating pages happens only once, leading to near-instant delivery for subsequent visitors.
JNews Theme: Built for Content and Speed
Choosing the right theme for a magazine or news site is critical. We selected the JNews – WordPress Newspaper Magazine Blog AMP Theme for its powerful features and inherent focus on performance.
JNews provided us with a professional, clean layout that is perfect for a history and archaeology news site. Crucially, the theme is optimized out-of-the-box for speed. This allowed us to bypass common performance bottlenecks found in less-optimized themes and focus our efforts on fine-tuning the site’s specific assets (images, fonts, and custom scripts) to achieve elite loading times.
Read in detail how we overcame problems in the JNews Theme settings
AMP and Mobile: Instant Access, Everywhere
The vast majority of news consumption today happens on smartphones. To cater to this reality, the new historyiscentral.org is built with a Mobile-First approach.
The JNews theme’s integrated AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) support was a game-changer. AMP allows certain pages to load almost instantaneously on mobile devices directly from Google’s cache. By enabling and meticulously configuring AMP, we eliminate mobile load-time friction, giving users immediate access to the latest history news, thereby improving user experience and gaining a critical ranking advantage.
Speed: The Ultimate Measure of Success
Our entire effort culminated in achieving exceptional Speed scores, particularly on Google PageSpeed Insights.
We utilized advanced techniques like Critical CSS generation, deferred loading of non-essential resources, and sophisticated browser caching. This allowed us to score in the highest possible tiers, ensuring that Core Web Vitals—metrics like Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)—are all optimized.
For the end-user, this means the past is accessible in the present, instantly, with zero technical lag. This high-performance standard is the hallmark of Web Evolution Company’s commitment to digital excellence.
SEO and Google: Visibility is Key
A great website that nobody can find is just a technical exercise. Our goal was to make historyiscentral.org highly visible to anyone searching for history news, archaeology discoveries, and educational content. This required a deep focus on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) best practices:
- Technical SEO: We implemented complete Schema Markup for all articles and news posts, providing Google with structured data that helps the search engine understand and categorize our content immediately. This is essential for achieving prominent placements in search results.
- Content Structure: We ensured a logical hierarchy, making the site easy for Google’s bots to crawl and index, solidifying its authority as a trusted source for historical information.
Read more about how we implemented technical SEO in JNews Theme WordPress theme.
