About organization
The 25th NSF EPSCoR National Conference is hosted by the Montana NSF EPSCoR Program which is a Montana University System (MUS) program focused on stimulating sustainable improvements in Montana's R&D capacity and competitiveness in science and engineering research. The Conference is open to NSF EPSCoR jurisdiction-selected faculty, students, VIPs, and staff. This Conference highlights unique aspects of the NSF EPSCoR program through invited speakers and interactive sessions.
About the project
In the collaboration with ADCI Solutions, several goals were achieved: to migrate the structure of a website from Drupal 6 to Drupal 8, change and optimize it to make content-management easier for admins and user experience better for visitors.
The project required a mobile-first theme development with a clean and simple layout, a prominent slideshow on the front page and easy access to key event information including location, logistics, program, and a map.
Migration
The previous version of the website was developed on Drupal 6. Due to the fact that Drupal 6 support was stopped, it was decided to use Drupal 8, migrate all content and develop a new responsive theme. We did not simply transfer the structure of the website but also optimized it so that users feel comfortable working with it.
Theming
This theme was developed using a mobile-first strategy. Nowadays mobile overtook desktop computers as people’s preferred devices to access the Internet. To help a client achieve his goals, we paid particular attention to the convenience of users of such devices.
Design
We were provided with a wireframe so the main goal was to create modern bright graphics for a website. Every step of a design process was discussed with client and program committees. It took us several iterations to create an overall design. We took into account the fact that the content will be changed by the client. For that reason, we illustrated several situations of pictures, links and other content collaborating with each other.
The main colors of the website are white and blue, several red accents for buttons were added too. We also used slight shadows to brighten the main content.
Any questions left? Contact us!
Why Drupal was chosen
The main point of the conference’s website is to display all the necessary information in an easily accessible way. And we chose Drupal because as a content management system it has everything for an efficient content placement.
Moreover the older version of the website was also made in Drupal. The NSF EPSCoR representatives were satisfied with it and wanted to enhance the website using the latest version of Drupal.
Technical Specifications
Drupal version:
Key modules/theme/distribution used:
Slick:
It is a perfect solution for responsive sliders. We chose this module because it works with fields and Views, supports audio and video. Also, it is fully customizable and that allows us to configure sliders in accordance with the project requirements.
Fontyourface:
Our front-end developer advised us to use this module for the supporting some fonts from Typekit.com. Thanks to this, we did not have to create an additional font, CSS or JS files. Also, these fonts are easy to import/export via Features.
Geofield:
Nowadays, Geofield is the best module for storing and displaying geographic data in Drupal 8. An integration with Google Geocoder service gives clients a possibility to fill such data in the human format (not latitude and longitude, but just address).
Menu block:
Drupal 8 core already allows to display a block of menu links. But we needed to expand all menu links with children or to root the menu tree to a specific menu item.
Styled google map:
Our designer wanted to go beyond the standard theme of Google map. And the Styled google map module helped us to develop custom styles for maps on the site.
Video embed field
The key goal of this project was providing users with a possibility to see all the necessary information. And of course, some information is in a video format. This useful module can embed videos from YouTube and Vimeo. Also, such videos are responsive out of the box that was also a very important condition for us.
Menu link attributes:
Not all links in menus are equally useful. Sometimes we should highlight a few links. In this case, we have to add additional classes for them. This module does a great job in sorting this problem out.
