Finland's Largest Multisite Installation

The Finnish Reserve Officers' Association is a national defense organization comprising approximately 27,000 reserve officers. The association has a three-tier organizational structure comprising 20 districts and 305 member associations. G-Works has had the honor of continuing its ongoing collaboration with the association since 2011.

In 2019 and 2020, G-Works revamped the association’s website and related member services for the third time. Once again, the technology solution was WordPress, which the member associations were already familiar with.

The Finnish Reserve Officers’ Association is one of our first clients. They are invaluable to our company: the kind of clients who believed in young talent when others did not yet. We had the opportunity to work with this long-established association on a website redesign as early as 2011, a project that also included updating the association’s entire visual identity to give it a more modern look.

Even back then, it was recognized that a website could serve the federation and its member associations in ways beyond simply serving as a publishing platform. The organization has operational needs that a WordPress-based website can address just as effectively. We set out together to explore these objectives.

The minimum requirement for the project was to create a shared WordPress installation on which the federation’s more than 300 member associations could, if they wished, set up their own websites. This alone would have made it Finland’s largest WordPress installation from the very beginning.

However, the goal was to do more with the system. Since a user interface was being created for the member associations through the federation, it could also be utilized for the organization’s other needs.

Based on the planning work—and as an extension that was not originally part of the project—it was decided to implement a member portal linked to the website, which would serve as an extranet system for member associations. Through this system, the association can inform its members about current issues and share common guidelines, rules, and practices.

The portal was also integrated organically into the association’s operations: member associations submit annual reports on their activities, based on which the association distributes grants to them. It was decided to replace the association’s old paper activity form with an activity log, where activities could be reported in real time. At the same time, the form also became a historical record of what each association has done over the years.

The Reserve Officers’ Association’s current website is already the third iteration of the original concept. Over the years, functionality has been improved, usability has been enhanced, and new features have been added to the system.

The basic concept, however, remains unchanged: the association provides its members with websites that also serve to manage the organization’s internal affairs. It remains Finland’s largest installation—until proven otherwise.