Category: News

This is a long time client that hired me to redesign their site in the mid 2010s. The site had been using Joomla for a while and back then it was still an ongoing proposition. But by 2022, the design was dated and the CMS universe had galloped so far past Joomla it was time for a change.

This is a hair-raising prospect, especially when you add to the mix more than a decade of devoted chronicling of news and events in the community, stored diligently in the form of news items and more than 19GB of PDFs of the community association newspaper.

But it was the association’s first opportunity in a while to get their site up to date. So we needed to make the most of it.

And speaking of opportunities, since we were questioning everything, why not use the occasion to bring in a CRM to allow them to track and engage with the volunteers that are the heart of the association and who make all its efforts possible.

Phewf. That’s a lot.

The one ace in the hole I had was the staff at OSCA who were willing to jump in and audit the site’s content. I set up a few guidelines with them, including some that could be enforced technically, to winnow down the tens of hundreds of news items to a much smaller number.

They also took the time to review evergreen content, mostly related to the programs the association runs for children, youth and adults.

This client involvement was critical to the success of this project as (a) they’re the subject experts and (b) while bulk migration tools exist, they don’t get you all the way there and we needed to reduce the time spent massaging the retained legacy content into shape.

The site is constantly updated with news and event listings. And while it’s amazing that the association has this commitment to making its site into the heartbeat of the community, it does pose some content management challenges.

So one of the key innovations afforded by moving to WordPress and its universe of plugins was the availability of a plugin that automatically ‘sunsets’ posts that are older a year or two or whatever you chose.

There was also some extra work to do building a unified interface to the association’s two bulk email applications. One for programming notices, the other for community news.

The Glenn Gould Foundation administers Canada’s pre-eminent prize for artistic excellence and innovation, produces a stand-out podcast of conversations with some amazing people, and serves as a marker of sorts to trace and commemorate the pianist, broadcaster and innovator himself.

They’ve been at it a while and, like so many other websites, have been producing a steady stream of content. Without looking back.

And where some might applaud their audacity, adventurous spirit and forward-facing outlook, the Google search index and their visitors would not.

Content inventory and audit

So first up on the agenda was a content inventory and audit. The foundation has done some amazing stuff over the years: events, concerts, street performance, the list goes on. Plus they’ve documented the life of one of Canada’s most celebrated musicians and the work of artists Gould has inspired.

I enjoyed reading through all these pieces and learned a lot about all things Gould. The site has some great content.

So the challenge was finding a way to keep the site’s content focussed on its mission, and findable without sacrificing all the gems buried in the depths of the WordPress database.

It took a strong and involved collaboration with and among foundation staff to get there. And I think it’s fair to say we did — down to about 100 pages from more than four times that many. Yet they got to keep the quirky bits, the stories, and the creative bits.

The design

The site needed a stronger visual hierarchy to allow the Foundation to draw attention to its current priorities and pre-eminent events. Its branding and colour scheme needed adjustment and it needed a clean, minimal and professional look commensurate with its stature.

As ever, the main design goal was to get out of the way and let the content shine through.

The engineering

The project sponsors were particularly frustrated by the former site’s back end which used a commercial page builder. These make it possible to turn every page into a spectacular wedding cake, but add needless complexity to the routine posting of site content. The site’s pages had all been built as static entities. So adding a new podcast episode or news item also involved adding a blurb and a link to the new content to both the home page and the content landing page. That had to be changed. And it was.

Equal Voice, an Ottawa-based advocacy organization seeking to increase the role of women in politics relaunched their website in March, 2022.