The ePosavje is a local, Slovenian news portal. It is build up based on Drupal 8 and Paragraphs module (Thunder distribution).
It serves as a rich informational source for the latest news divided into classic categories (politics, sport, culture)...
Besides that, users can find information about food offers, city cameras, and posthumous information.
About the project
We were assigned to developer a copy of an old Wordpress news portal.
The client asked us to do regular security and core updates, as of maintenance of the whole project.
The goal was to have a news portal with main categories:
- Local news
- Foreign news
- Culture
- Sport
- Chronics
- Fun facts
- Entertainment
- Videos
To include 3rd party sources like:
- City cameras
- Ads
- Food restaurants with daily menu
- Posthumous information
- Instagram photos
- Weather widget
- Zodiac
News
The news has it’s own label for videos and photo galleries so the visitors no need to go inside the news to see if there is a content they are looking for.
The main Paragraphs are:
- Lead image
- Text
- Video
- Gallery
- Tweet
- Quotation
- Pinterest widget
- Instagram widget
- Twitter widget
Every image and video has its own field for the source.
The news can be drafted and later approved by the main content editor.
There is a list of the connected news based on tags or the same category.
Process and Insights
We implemented SOLR search engine. SOLR or similar system is a must for large database and speed performances.
Sticky news
The client asked us for a system for the level of importance of the news. Every news can be marked as sticky, promoted, or promoted on the front page. There are 3 image dimensions related to the marking.
Images that are uploaded can be adjusted for focus. You, as a content creator can mark the part of the image that must always be in the focus, even if we are doing some cropping and image styling this part stays visible to the readers. This is done through the module "Focal point"
Outcome
The modern news portal configured and developed from the ground up within a record period of 1.5 months in development.
The stuff at ePosavje now have a better-optimized platform for easy news publishing and they have a team for maintenance and upgrades support.
Conclusion
It was a great time working with Blaž (site administrator at ePosavje). His knowledge and experience were valuable for quality assurance and great outcome we have now.
With every news portal, we develop there is always something new to learn, this was no exception.
Why Drupal was chosen
As for now, we have a lot of experience using Drupal 8. This is our 3rd portal based on the Paragraphs module. The cashing and site speed optimization was our first priority so we did it with the platform we now by the heart.
Drupal 8 serves as a great content management platform and the Paragraphs module helped us to configure 10 different news blocks easily. More about this.
The editors loved the demo so there were no obstacles to continue working with Drupal.
Technical Specifications
Drupal version:
Key modules/theme/distribution used:
