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By Edo on
Sustrans are a leading UK charity who work with families, communities, policy-makers and partner organisations so that people are able to choose healthier, cleaner and cheaper journeys, with better places and spaces to move through and live in. They commissioned us to undertake a major strategic review of their entire digital offering and give them a robust, easy-to-use technical solution.
With employees across the UK working on a vast network of projects, it was becoming increasingly difficult for the main team to ensure a coherent tone of voice across all communications. A collection of disparate messaging, content and sub-brands was emerging across multiple digital platforms. Sustrans had to identify what their supporters and stakeholders needed, and how best to deliver this online.
Why Drupal was chosen:
The selection of Drupal as a CMS was part of larger piece of digital strategy work that considered Sustrans’ digital landscape, social media, community and internal governance and resourcing. The outputs of this process were key recommendations and high level requirements for the next generation Sustrans site.
A technical analysis of the functional requirements against leading CMS platforms was then performed. Drupal was chosen primarily for its support for complex features like mapping, e-commerce and community functionality but also for its suitability for integration with other systems' CRM and back office fulfilment tools. The maturity of migration modules also made Drupal a great choice for this project.
Describe the project (goals, requirements and outcome):
Sustrans needed a modern CMS that allowed them full control over their content and the ability to implement an updated digital brand.
They also needed to rebuild their online National Cycle Network mapping solution. The mapping technology was starting to show its age and was becoming expensive to support and maintain: it regularly caused the website to fall over when making route updates. Sustrans were keen to use open source and cloud based technologies where possible to keep the costs of a solution within their budget and reliance on traditional hosting to a minimum.
Sustrans also wanted to bring their community of volunteers together into a space connected to their main website. This would simplify the moderation process and ensure community and content could live alongside each other and generate discussion around current transport issues.
There was also a requirement to implement an innovative fundraising feature focussed around the National Cycle Network that could support the other ways that Sustrans raise money. This functionality needed to allow people to promote specific routes within National Cycle Network that had meaning to them and
Technical specifications
Key modules/theme/distribution used:
Why these modules/theme/distribution were chosen:
The site was started using our standard make file and install profile which includes all the key site building modules plus a number of modules focused on improving the admin and content editor experience.
Core Modules
- Drupal Route nodes
- SpinInt - the SpinInt module was developed as part of the Virtual NCN component and provide a UI widget to increment a number field
Contributing Modules
The project used a range of contributed modules, the key modules for the solution were:
- Commerce - used for donations, VNCN and shop and caters for different journeys
- Drupal Commerce SagePay Integration - key for taking payments
- Features - our team was large, so this was essential for managing development workflow
- Migrate - for migrating commerce content
- Organic Groups - to build the volunteer community
Custom Modules
There were a few key areas of the project where custom modules were developed to meet requirements:
Sustrans Get Going
The route mapping tool (originally called Get Going) used a combination of Google components:
Organizations involved:
Team members:
Project team:
The project team at Sift Digital was relatively large with strategists, UX consultants, designers, architects and developers and project managers and account managers.
We followed a waterfall approach which meant team members joined the project at different stages. We ensured the same lead technical architect was fully involved throughout the project.
Rich Jones was the technical architect and lead developer on the project and ensured requirements were implemented in a robust and future proofed way, as well as leading and managing other developers on the project.
The mapping feature was led by Ian Smith and Fabrizio Meinero and required an in depth prototyping phase to identify the limitations of the technologies available.
Team Website
Sectors:
Non-profit
