“I want to update my website myself” is a commonly-heard plea from site owners who’ve realised that the job of keeping the content of their websites up to date is too important a job to be left to web designers. In this article I’m going to explain why you should consider managing your content yourself and what you might look for in a web content management system (CMS).

More about web content management systems

A Drupal development project involving lots of media integration: flash, images and movies.

My role involved building the custom theme from artwork and HTML supplied by other team members; writing a couple of modules to integrate media files and another to provide a simple competition facility. I also heavily customised the advanced search facility to suit EFD’s particular needs. As a team member I also took on a consultancy role where necessary, advising others on the best approach to solve various technical problems.

“Alfred did a great job, bringing quality and expertise to the project.”
— Gilles Boisselet, unit9.com

Carried out for unit9 and their client Entertainment Film Distributors.

The Sustain-a-what?!?! application is a quiz intended to amuse while making the user think about the issues surrounding the hot topic of sustainability.

The quiz runs on the Drupal platform so the client can maintain its content for themselves. I wrote a custom module to manage the quiz questions and answers, as well as storing the results and displaying them for users taking the quiz.

“An excellent service from start to finish. There were delays in us being in a position to begin the project but Likemind stayed in touch regularly and were ready to go as soon as we were. The technical specification was immediately understood by them and suggestions were made to improve it with regards to how facebook actually works. Their understanding of the visual as well as the technical was particularly useful to us.

We were very impressed with the service, the level of competence and the end result. Would not hesitate to recommend.”
– Chris Hillier, twelfth man limited

Developed for twelfth man and their client synnwyr busnes.

I’ve worked on a few large site migration jobs now, so I thought I’d share some of my experiences and what I’ve learned along the way.

I recently moved my hobby site Odd Books to Drupal, so that’s the one I’ll use as the prime example.
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Wolf and Water Arts Company is a charity which does art work with various groups. The company wanted a new website to help them manage and present their extensive archives of material related to past and present projects. Their old site was hard to update and hence new content tended to be added belatedly or not at all.

Drupal provided a good match for their needs, with its flexible categorisation and general ease of use. Although the new site has a lot more content, it is more accessible due to the clearer menu structure and other navigation options.

“Likemind were excellent - they took plenty of time to fully understand our requirements, exceeded our expectations & delivered a splendid website on time. Training & follow up was also excellent. I would not hesitate to recommend them to anyone.” - Peter Smith, Wolf + Water.

The brief for the web site of this popular North Devon tourist attraction was to create an attractive modern site with a clear organisational structure which would be maintainable by L&B staff.

Given the large amount of content with varying needs for its presentation and management Drupal was the obvious choice. I created a custom theme and companion module that matched the major divisions of the site and installed and configured other appropriate modules. One of the challenges was in the Visitor section, which is internationalized (in seven different languages) whereas the rest of the site is not.

The result is both aesthetically pleasing (the graphic design in large part thanks to Nik Barrie, the L&B webmaster) and highly functional.

“The web site was excellent, containing a vast amount of information, supported by photography of the highest standard. With an easy to browse layout, the pages provided all the information a potential visitor was likely to need, as well appealing to the narrow gauge railway enthusiast.” - VisitBritain inspection report.

I was asked by unit9.com to help develop the backend administration for Metro International’s new website. This involved radical customisation of the Drupal content management system so Metro staff could easily maintain the content of this beautifully designed site with its many complex page structures. It doesn’t look like a Drupal site, does it?

“Working with Alfred from Likemind was great, he knows how to use Drupal to do what is needed and make the project happen. I am very happy with his insight into what features will be useful to the end user without laboring on what will not be as effective.” — Yates Buckley, unit9.