Support for Drupal 7 is ending on 5 January 2025—it’s time to migrate to Drupal 10! Learn about the many benefits of Drupal 10 and find migration tools in our resource center.
By Eastern Standard on
Moving into 2012, The Jewish Exponent embarked on a very ambitious initiative: To re-design and re-implement both their print publication and online presence. Not simply a "refresh", the project involved deconstructing and rebuilding their content, their aesthetic, and their technology.
We were tasked with developing a comprehensive website that is able to handle the management and presentation of a vast array of carefully categorized content produced internally by the Exponent's editorial team. In addition to the Exponent's own content, however, the site also allows users to submit events, business listings, engagement and other lifestyle announcements, and a host of other content. Finally, a robust advertisement system and pay-to-promote content options give the Exponent the ability to monetize the site without intruding on the user experience.
Why Drupal was chosen:
Ultimately, Drupal was chosen because it was the only platform that we were confident could handle the project requirements. We knew that the complexity involved in bringing the Exponent's entire publication online would require extensive use of content types, content categorization, and publishing workflows, along with a variety of user roles and an e-commerce implementation.
Some specific areas of Drupal that were critical to the success of the project include:
Taxonomy system
- Ability to easily categorize thousands of articles
- Easily sort and display articles by category
Flexibility
- Easily display content in multiple formats across the site
- Easily show ads targeted to content
Ecosystem
- Thousands of contributed modules allowed us to provide well-tested solutions to common problems.
Describe the project (goals, requirements and outcome):
The main goals of the project were:
- To bring the paper online in such a way that the extensive amount of content was available, but organized in a way that made the site easy to navigate.
- Create a robust community calendar, filtered by event type and related to content taxonomy throughout the site. The events listings, which are free and user-submitted, may be upgraded at a small cost and may be featured in the print edition, at the Editor's discretion.
- Allow users to submit "Mazel Tov!" announcements, including births, engagements, and the like.
- Extensive social media integration, including Facebook Connect, which powers commenting, login, and sharing tools. Each time a user comments or otherwise interacts with the site, their activity will be visible to their network on Facebook, which will dramatically increase traffic and visibility.
- Extensive, customizable display advertising to allow the Exponent to generate exposure for their advertisers, and revenue for their organization.
Drupal as a platform worked with us to accomplish these goals:
Drupal's taxonomy system is especially crucial to how content is managed, organized, and displayed. The site features articles ranging from restaurant reviews to rich editorial content about conflicts in the Middle East, so the ability to separate & compartmentalize content was extremely important. The taxonomy system allowed us not only to categorize the content, but provide a deep menu tree and the ability to tag related or similar content throughout the site.
The calendar was created using a combination of the Views and Date modules, with custom development around each. The calendar is browsable and searchable, and users can submit their own events to the calendar as well. Drupal's customizable permissions system helped a lot here - we are able to allow users access to create and manage only their own events.
For social media integration, we heavily utilized the "Drupal for Facebook" module, which allowed us to provide "Login with Facebook" functionality. We also utilized Facebook's own widgets throughout the site, including the Facebook commenting system, which allows users to comment on articles and other content using their Facebook account.
To give the Exponent the ability to create and display a variety of differently-sized advertisements throughout the site, we utilized the Simple Ads module on top of a variety of customizations we provided explicitly for the Exponent's needs.
Technical specifications
Drupal version:
Drupal 7.x
Key modules/theme/distribution used:
Why these modules/theme/distribution were chosen:
- Taxonomy Menu / Taxonomy Menu Trails / Taxonomy Breadcrumb
- Allowed us to create robust taxonomy-based site navigation. The categorization of content is what drives the menu, so it was critical to have a lot of flexibility here.
- Functional breadcrumbs and working active menu trail. As you move through the site, you'll notice that your breadcrumb trail follows a logical pathway even when traversing deep into categories.
- Enabled us to create the ability to browse articles, events and other content by topic. By providing related articles we can keep the user moving through the site by enticing them with additional, relevant content.
- Simple Ads
- With minor customization and the help of Views, we were able to provide highly targeted ads based on taxonomy.
- Drupal for Facebook
- The Drupal for Facebook module allows users to login using their Facebook credentials, rather than having to sign up for a separate account with the Exponent (although that is also supported!)
- Panels / Views / Bean
- Panels allowed us to create fully client-manageable rich landing pages. The client even has control over the "layout" of their main landing pages, as they can mix and match various pre-created widgets to create a custom experience.
- We leveraged Views to create dynamic, filterable lists of content.
- Bean allowed us to create the capability for the client to easily highlight specific content on the rich landing pages.
- Ubercart / UC Node Checkout
- Allows end users to purchase content for display on the site.
- Media
- Enable the client to effectively manage a library containing thousands of image assets.
Organizations involved:
Team members:
Project team:
Using a data-first approach, our team blends strategy, creativity, and technology to drive brand transformation.
Our company was created by merging a branding agency and a technology company to meet the need for truly integrated brand and digital customer experiences.
We love nothing more than solving complicated challenges head-on by drawing on an uncommon mix of real-world experience, research, deep technical expertise, and inherent creativity.
Sectors:
Publishing
Comments
Wow!
I have been looking to create a similar website and this one is simply amazing!
_
In Key modules/theme/distribution used section there is not any information about the used theme. Can you please tell the name of theme too? However it seems custom one, but please give more information about the name of basic used theme.
Big Fan
I just jealous man!!