Ixis were involved in the full spectrum of the project, from informing the user experience process, writing user stories, and gathering and prioritising the functional requirements. Ixis used an agile project methodology to plan, manage and deliver sprints of development work to rebuild six council websites using Drupal 7 and a common installation profile.
The goal of the rebuilt sites was to achieve a modern, responsive platform with a clean design that would provide an exemplar user experience and meet gold standards of accessibility. A repeatable content migration from OpenText’s LiveLink (more recently known as “OpenText Content Suite") to Drupal for each of the sites was developed alongside the site builds.
About the project
Highlights
- Built three sites on the Drupal Panopoly distribution to support code maintenance and ease staff re-training
- Recreation of the existing site designs whilst implementing WAG 2.0 AA compliance
- Over 3000 pages of static content to scrub and migrate
- Reduction in annual hosting and licence costs providing value for money
- Award winning website design
- Clustered hosting model with Content Delivery Network to maximise resilience, traffic management and availability of servers
- Fully supported and maintained with our ITIL accredited application and infrastructure layer support service
The Results
Haringey’s website has been ranked one of the top local authority websites in the UK for the second year running. The website earned a four-star rating, the highest available, from independent watchdog, The Society of IT Management (SOCITM).
The Better Connected assessment is built around the concept of 'top tasks'. This approach to website design and navigation enables quick and simple customer journeys for website users from search engine or home page through to resolution. SOCITM concluded that Haringey's site was an example of best practice for others to follow in terms of usability, its "clear and clean layout" and ease of access on mobile devices.
In its overall summing up SOCITM said:
"The site has a wide range of information about services and easy access to carrying out tasks, presented using a structure and style which makes it very easy to use. This site really works - it's not just a show pony!"
Why Drupal was chosen
Drupal was chosen for its installation profile capability and rich suite of existing modules and functionality that could be wrapped up in Features for re-use across the suite of Haringey Council websites.
Technical Specifications
Drupal version:
Key modules/theme/distribution used:
Panopoly provided a jumpstart to a fully configurable Panels based Drupal site.
The editorial workflow of content is important to the council departments including rolebased access control and the ability to schedule content for publishing and later removal automatically.
Search API was used to communicate with the Google Site Search service along with some custom template work to add MIME custom type icons next to results.
Openlayers provided a map render to display event locations which we switched data providers between MapQuest and GoogleMaps easily.
