December 22–28, 2025 PPCC Work Update

Over the week of December 22–28, 2025, work focused on strengthening both the Prison Professors public website and the Profiles platform so they feel cohesive, load reliably, and communicate credibility to the audiences who matter most (justice-impacted people and families, legal advocates, and corrections stakeholders). Across both properties, the emphasis was on fixing production issues quickly, improving navigation and usability, strengthening donor trust signals, and laying a solid technical foundation for long-term SEO and growth.

On the Profiles platform, the main engineering effort was protecting user trust and improving the experience for new and returning users. A key investigation began around a serious privacy issue in which profiles marked private were still appearing on public leaderboard surfaces; the filtering logic was reviewed and work was initiated to ensure private or unpublished profiles do not surface publicly. In parallel, the “money path” was stabilized by validating and shipping the fix for PayPal subscription/webhook handling, ensuring recurring donation events are processed correctly. Additional work progressed to make the Profiles site feel like a seamless extension of the main website by aligning navigation and footer patterns, reducing friction and improving consistency across the user journey.

On the main Prison Professors website, the week included multiple production hardening improvements that removed critical runtime errors and improved user flow. A CORS-related issue caused by client-side external API calls was resolved by shifting those data needs to internal server-side queries. A missing backend function issue that caused errors on pages relying on content/media data was corrected by syncing and deploying the necessary backend updates. Usability improvements were also shipped, including a redirect to guide visitors from the general courses entry point to the correct overview page and multiple spacing/layout refinements on interior pages to keep typography and section structure consistent.

Trust and transparency work continued as well. The financial transparency page was strengthened by adding access to the organization’s Form 990, reinforcing credibility for donors and stakeholders. Alongside that, the homepage and key messaging were iterated based on stakeholder feedback, including clearer calls-to-action and stronger “why this matters” framing—particularly around documenting growth, showing decision-makers tangible evidence of preparation, and helping visitors quickly find the resources designed for their role.

The week also included meaningful progress on site modernization and SEO readiness. The Talks/Booking page was updated to match the site’s modern design system (removing outdated decorative elements and replacing older sections with consistent reusable components), improving both appearance and clarity. A technical SEO review was completed and acted on: canonical behavior, redirects, metadata consistency, and crawl depth issues were addressed, and sitemap/metadata improvements were implemented to support proper indexing and discoverability. Separate work also confirmed that team member pages are indexable and structured correctly for search engines, which is important for organizational credibility and brand search visibility.

Finally, ongoing operational support continued throughout the week to keep the ecosystem running smoothly. That included triaging and responding to support needs (account claiming, onboarding edge cases, profile data corrections, and partner coordination), updating donor records, and setting up recurring invoicing structure for 2026 services. The combined outcome is a more stable, more credible, and more cohesive digital presence—built to support near-term growth and long-term mission impact.