Overview
LEAD, or Learning · Environment · Action · Discovery is a student-run restoration program in the College of the Environment, directed by graduate students in the Environmental Studies department. LEAD seeks to improve habitat in and around Western's campus to provide ecological, social, and educational benefits to the community.
Goal
Previously, LEAD's content was being managed on Campusweb, a server that required content editors to work in HTML and code to update the website. Not only was the site difficult to maintain, but the server hosting the files was outdated and scheduled to be eliminated. LEAD wanted more flexibility in adding and maintaining content to promote upcoming work parties as well as showcase past projects. They needed a way to consistently add projects and share results of the work they do to engage the community and grow their program. In addition, they needed the ability to easily maintain the website as consistently graduating students meant there is a high turnover rate for content editors.
Strategy
We migrated the LEAD site into Drupal, and chose to relocate the main site within the College of the Environment. Moving the site into Drupal, a Content Management System (CMS) allows content editors to do things easier, like edit existing pages, or build and publish new pages online, without needing local server access.
We then created a content type to showcase their projects. This allowed content editors to add content in fields, which then outputs a consistently formatted page. The project content type comes with a pre-built layout using Layout Builder and views, which helps manage the page structure and its overall accessibility. When a new project is added to the website, it automatically generates a card view which is displayed on the homepage and the Projects page - adding visual interest, as well as allowing users to see at a glance all the projects to date, the date the project took place and a summary of the work completed at each work party.
By migrating the site into Drupal, new content editors can take advantage of in-house Drupal training provided by WebTech, ensuring that successive leadership has the tools to continue to keep the site up to date.