Master Builders’ Association of Western Pennsylvania

A full redesign and a new CMS, with an editorial feel.

The MBA has represented the region’s commercial contractors since 1886. Its site needed to look like the association it is, and its editors needed a CMS they could actually use.

Visit mbawpa.org
The Master Builders’ Association home page Lava built: the Pittsburgh skyline behind the headline “Leading the Industry, Building the Region!” and a Join the MBA button.
Client
Master Builders’ Associationof Western Pennsylvania
What we built
Website redesign and CMS migration
Platform
WordPressMoved fromExpressionEngine
The problem

Hard to support, hard to edit, and out of date.

The MBA publishes constantly: news, events, member updates, a magazine. Its site ran on ExpressionEngine, which had become hard to support and hard to edit, and the design no longer matched an association that’s been the voice of commercial construction in Western Pennsylvania for well over a century.

They needed two things at once: a design worthy of the institution, and a publishing system built for a managing editor and a day-to-day editor, not a developer.

What we did

Editorial on the page, structured underneath.

A 140-year-old association moved off ExpressionEngine onto WordPress, with editing built for the people who publish every week.

  1. 01A full redesign with an editorial feel, so news and features read like the publication they are.
  2. 02A migration from ExpressionEngine to WordPress, content and all.
  3. 03Editing built with structured fields rather than a page builder, so editors fill in the pieces and the design stays intact.
  4. 04Training for the editors who publish every week.
Before and after

Same association. A new front page.

Before The MBA’s home page before the redesign, archived March 2026.
The old Master Builders’ Association home page, as the Wayback Machine archived it on March 4, 2026: the MBA logo and a thin menu over a slider photo of cranes and steel framing at sunset, captioned “MBA Building Excellence Awards,” with a Learn More button.
After What Lava built, on desktop and phone.
The new Master Builders’ Association home page on desktop: the Pittsburgh skyline under the headline “Leading the Industry, Building the Region!”, then the “What’s happening at the MBA” events section.
The new Master Builders’ Association home page on a phone: the skyline hero, the headline and the Join the MBA button.
What changed

The design holds, whoever is editing.

The site launched at mbawpa.org in 2026. The MBA’s editors publish on their own schedule, and the design holds up no matter who’s editing.

What made it hard

A long history, a heavy schedule.

An association with 140 years of identity and a heavy publishing schedule can’t have a site that drifts as content is added. The editing system had to protect the design without getting in the editors’ way.

Next

Pittsburgh Opera

A refresh, not a rebuild, and a new CMS underneath.

Read the story
Pittsburgh Opera home page: Rigoletto’s jester under “Next on stage: Rigoletto,” with a Buy Tickets button, above the season cards

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Tell us what isn’t working and we’ll tell you whether we’re the right fit.

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