Louisville Metro Government (Louisville) is a competitive, authentic, global city, home to UPS WorldPort and a center for advanced manufacturing and logistics, as well as among only a dozen U.S. cities that have all five major performing arts groups.
Louisville contracted Fig Leaf Software to implement a new responsive design for the the public website and to implement the Drupal Content Management System. In addition to themeing the design in Drupal, the Fig Leaf team also helped improve the user experience and design a content strategy and migration plan.
About the project
With the revamp of Louisville’s website and streamlining of content, the city is better prepared to serve its constituents. Since Fig Leaf implemented the design theme in Drupal, non-technical staff members are now able to quickly and easily manage and maintain site content based on their role. Visitors ability to perform self service tasks has been greatly enhanced.
Following the initial public website launch (www.louisvilleky.gov), the Fig Leaf team embarked on the second phase of the launch, a user-based My Louisville tool. The My Louisville custom toolbox experience will enable users to isolate and save the most important items on the site depending on their location and role.
If a user needs to locate the closest fire or police department to their home or find out who the council members are for their district, MyLouisville will be able to provide that information very quickly. This toolbox will allow citizens to more easily interact with with the city of Louisville, and will be launched in the next few months.
Why Drupal was chosen
Fig Leaf Software partnered with the City of Louisville, KY, to redesign and relaunch the website on the Drupal 7 platform. The design is fully-responsive and was based on a series of mock-ups the city created as a starting point. Fig Leaf’s design team and the Louisville Metro Government key stakeholders worked iteratively to improve the visual treatments with an emphasis on usability and a clean look and feel.
Fig Leaf’s team closely collaborated with the city’s in-house technology team, to identify the best possible modules combined with minimal-but-powerful custom code to meet the needs of Louisville Metro Government visitors. The site required easily discoverable information for diverse audiences, a robust user engagement approach and cost-effective maintainability which could be expanded by the City’s in-house technologist. Fig Leaf also created a new Drupal module for publicity-photo management which will be shared with the Drupal community.
Technical Specifications
Drupal version:
Tools Box + Services + Feeds + Colorbox: Utilized in unison to construct a unique integration of Map, Search Features, 3rd party content sources into a single unified footer navigation feature.
OG (Organic Groups) - Used to provide finite control of staff, and content editing groups. Creating a combined of ease of use, and administrative oversight
Admin Views: Provides the an unique opportunity to integrate custom search views with drupal-standard content and VBO tools. Used notably with "where is it used" file searches.
Features: LVG is a two team operation. In-house staff, and Fig Leaf staff work on the Drupal site simultaneously, across multiple dev servers, and in sync with the Acquia update process. Features is a critical part of that process, providing a superlative means of packaging and maintaining both code base, and data structure updates.
