Wilton Fire District. A modern site for a community institution.
The Wilton Fire District has been protecting the Wilton, NY community since 1947 — powered entirely by volunteers. Five Towers rebuilt their outdated site in WordPress, with a new design, copywriting, events integration, and a dual-access SharePoint setup for both public documents and internal volunteer resources.
Who they are, and why they came to us.
The Wilton Fire District is a volunteer fire department that has been serving the Wilton, NY community since 1947.
Operating two stations and powered entirely by volunteers, they respond to fires, medical emergencies, and other incidents across the district — while also managing the administrative responsibilities that come with being a public fire district, including public meetings, budget notices, FOIL requests, and meeting minutes.
Their existing site was outdated and not user-friendly — it wasn’t reflecting the professionalism of the organization or meeting the practical needs of the community, volunteers, and board of commissioners who rely on it.
The Challenge
More than a website — a public information platform.
A fire district’s website serves a more complex set of needs than most. It’s not just a marketing tool — it’s a public resource. The old site wasn’t effectively meeting those needs, and the organization had no clean way to display all of the information.
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Outdated design that didn’t reflect the professionalism or community standing of the organization.
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Not user-friendly for the community members, volunteers, and commissioners who needed to use it regularly.
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Copywriting needed a full refresh to accurately represent the department’s services, structure, and community role.
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The volunteer page was thin and undersupported — a significant gap for an organization that depends entirely on volunteer recruitment to operate.
What We Did
The work, and the thinking behind it.
Five Towers built the Wilton Fire District site from scratch in WordPress — balancing the public-facing needs of a community resource with the operational needs of the organization’s volunteers and board.
Built for the community and the organization.
We designed and built a clean, professional WordPress site structured around the three groups who use it most — community members looking for safety information and district updates, volunteers accessing internal resources, and commissioners and staff managing public-facing district information. Call statistics on the homepage — updated manually by the team — give the site a dynamic quality that reflects the department’s ongoing activity in the community.
Public meetings and events, always up to date.
The old site had an events integration, but it displayed events as a plain list with no way to click through for more detail. We replaced it with a clean, well-integrated events plugin where each event has its own dedicated page — giving the district a reliable way to post full details for public meeting notices, commissioner meetings, fundraisers, and community events. The calendar is easy for the team to update independently, and actually looks like it belongs on the site.
Public documents, easy to find.
We added a clean public-facing link to the district’s SharePoint, giving community members easy access to required public documents like meeting minutes and budget information — surfaced clearly in the site navigation so residents can find what they need without digging.
A voice that honors the volunteer mission.
We wrote all site copy — homepage, emergency services, district information, volunteer recruitment, and contact pages. Particular attention went to the volunteer page, which was significantly expanded from the old site — giving prospective volunteers the full picture of what joining the Wilton Fire District looks like, what training is involved, and why it matters. The page also includes two ways to apply: an online form for convenience, and a downloadable PDF for those who prefer to submit by email. The tone throughout is proud, community-forward, and clear, written to serve both residents seeking information and volunteers being recruited to serve alongside the team.
Structured for search from launch day.
On-page SEO was baked in at build — metadata, schema markup for the organization, semantic heading structure, and internal linking across service and district pages. Local SEO signals are built into the copy, positioning the Wilton Fire District for search visibility across the Wilton and Saratoga County area.
What We Did
What changed after launch.
The Wilton Fire District launched with a site that works as hard as the volunteers who run the department — clear for community members, functional for staff, and professional enough to reflect 75+ years of service to the Wilton community.
The site is maintained on a Five Towers hosting plan, with the district team able to manage events, news posts, and document updates independently through the WordPress dashboard.
Project Details
Services Provided
- Website Design & Build
- Events Integration
- Managed Hosting