FivePaths provides strategic technology and web services to a diversity of organizations including associations, publishers, businesses, libraries, nonprofits, universities, foundations, and government. “Our strategy is to understand your strategy, which keeps our technology solutions on target with your needs.”
Their approach incorporates clients’ goals, and helps them define a sustainable strategy for success. FivePaths provides expert website design and development for both small and large sites, helping clients to manage web content more efficiently while they increase their online resources and community. As a proven expert in software evaluation and data integration, FivePaths know what tools work, and in what combinations.
Goals
FivePaths needed to create a website to inform their current and prospective clients about services they offer, as well as information about valuable technology tools, trends and resources available to them to help improve their work. FivePaths also needed their site to demonstrate some of the common technologies they implement for their clients.
Eric Leland, a principal of FivePaths, explains that a significant amount of their work is done internationally and with groups who work in a variety of languages. FivePaths needed to better communicate to their existing clients, and to a wider audience about all of their resources and services offered, including internet strategy, data integration, vendor selection, web development, tech planning and content management system (CMS) design.
Why Drupal?
FivePaths took several years before standarizing on a CMS. Through careful review and prototyping, they learned that Drupal supports the need for small and large integrated sites, and a wide variety of rules for managing content. Drupal allowed them to be more efficient in their work and offer clients a more sustainable, best fit solution. Drupal is ideal for web projects with a lot of content, community and integration needs – the projects FivePaths enjoys the most. Drupal sites can be easily sustained for long term, allowing FivePaths to deliver high-quality, lasting solutions.
Designing the Site
FivePaths works with projects from the ground up to comprehensively understand their goals. To communicate this visually, FivePaths’ implemented animated photography and service descriptions using expanding image panels (based on the Kwicks jquery library) as a way to simply and powerfully communicate their services, and to encourage further reading.
FivePaths applied ImageCache to images added to the panels to create a simple system that scales, colors and shapes our uploaded images automatically. Similarly, FivePaths uses ImageCache together with website screenshots from their client projects to create compelling client profiles that are straightforward to produce.
Security and Performance
As the FivePaths team commonly helps clients increase the safety and performance of their web investments, they implemented a comprehensive automated backup module called Backup Client-Server on its website (now in the module repository). The module can be configured with a number of automated back-up schedules, of either the drupal files, the database or both. A quick, one button backup feature is available, and is especially helpful to keep the site safe before making major changes. All backup files have basic information about when it was completed, what the backup is and special notes for the administrator to keep track. This module is integrated with Amazon S3 and other tools for easy off-site backup ,which guarantees that all data will be saved continuously.
Several projects FivePaths works on receive high traffic, requiring performance optimization both on the server and Drupal levels. As one outcome of this work, FivePaths implemented a CDN module integrated with Voxel VoxCAST for managing traffic.
Localization into Spanish
FivePaths works with a number of clients from Central and South America who need consulting assistance. In the past, FivePaths found it difficult to communicate clearly their services. It was necessary for FivePaths to hire a translator for each project creating additional cost and problems in translation. FivePaths needed to increase its ability to communicate in Spanish.
After localizing using the Translation Management module together with professional translation from ICanLocalize, communication is much easier. The integration works very smoothly, and any new content can be immediately sent for translation. The same professional works regularly with them, a great way for the translator to knows FivePaths needs and to provide the highest quality translations.
Who Did What
FivePaths.com was designed by a core team of developers and producers: Eric Leland, Jason Salter and Francisco Cortez, the lead developer. Amir Helzer and Bruce Pearson of OnTheGoSystems, Inc. are responsible for the Translation Management module.
