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By sjhuskey on
Request for Proposal For Website Redesign
Submission Details
All submissions responding to this request must be submitted via email to website@apaclassics.org no later than April 1, 2014 at 5:00pm EDT
The American Philological Association (APA), which will soon change its name to Society for Classical Studies (SCS), anticipates a quick turnaround and hopes to make its final selection by May 15, 2014.
Submission Questions and Clarifications
You may contact the following person if you have any questions or require clarification on any topics covered in this Request for Proposal: Samuel J. Huskey, Information Architect, Phone: (405) 325-0490, Email: huskey@apaclassics.org
Introduction and Executive Summary
The American Philological Association seeks an experienced Drupal themer and developer to redesign its websites with particular attention to the user experience. The new theme must incorporate or improve upon existing templates and modules, and it must be compatible with the organization’s three sites. It must also be compatible with all major browsers (Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, Chrome, and Opera), accessible, responsive, extensible, and optimized for mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets. The successful proposal will also include a plan for implementing a single login for the organization’s three websites.
Business Overview and Background
Founded in 1869 as the American Philological Association (APA), the Society for Classical Studies is the principal learned society in North America for the study of ancient Greek and Roman languages, literatures, and civilizations. While the majority of its members are university and college Classics teachers, members also include scholars in other disciplines, primary and secondary school teachers, and interested lay people. For over a century this community has relied on the Society to produce several series of scholarly books and texts; the journal, Transactions of the American Philological Association; and an annual meeting each January in conjunction with the Archaeological Institute of America.
The Association has recently decided to change its name to the Society for Classical Studies (SCS). While the organization's core activities will continue to be the facilitation of communication among classics scholars, it also wants to make a greater effort to share its members' interest in classical antiquity with a wider, in many cases nonacademic, public. This effort begins with making it easier to understand what we do. Few people outside of academia (and not many within it) understand the word "philology", but our field is regularly known as "classics". The modifications to our web site outlined in this RFP, including a change in URL, are essential steps in changing our name and being more approachable to a wider public. We therefore intend to defer filing the governmental documents necessary to making the change official until this modification of our web site is complete.
The organization has three websites hosted on a FreeBSD server operating in a shared environment. All three of the websites run on separate Drupal 7 codebases using variations on the same Zen subtheme.
- http://apaclassics.org is the main site for the organization. It includes a blog, discussion forum, articles, informational pages, and user accounts for members of the organization.
- http://program.apaclassics.org is the site where members can submit abstracts of papers and proposals for complete sessions to be considered for inclusion in the program for the annual meeting. The Program Committee also uses the site to discuss and vote on abstracts, to group accepted abstracts into sessions, and to create a schedule of sessions. Staff uses the site to generate text for meeting publications (Program and Abstract Book).
- http://placement.apaclassics.org is the site of the APA’s Placement Service, which advertises positions available for professional classicists and handles scheduling for interviews that occur at the annual meeting.
Detailed Specifications
The successful bidder will propose a redesign of the organization’s websites that improves the overall user experience by
- Implementing a new theme across all of the organization’s sites, preferably using a single instance of the theme for all of them so that adjustments have to be made only once
- Providing a unified login system for all three sites that incorporates and improves upon the existing membership verification process, which is controlled by a custom module with an API for connecting to a membership database in CiviCRM
- Incorporating principles of responsive design to optimize the site for viewing on a variety of screen sizes, from smartphone to tablet to laptop to full-sized monitor
- Ensuring cross-browser compatibility with Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, Chrome, and Opera
- Observing best practices for making the sites accessible to users with disabilities
- Improving the existing navigation scheme, user forms, templates, and views (e.g., for account registration, forum submissions, abstract submissions, etc.)
- Adhering to the best practices of the Drupal development community.
In addition, the successful proposal will include plans for changing the URLs of the websites to reflect the change in the organization’s name from The American Philological Association to the Society for Classical Studies, including redirect tables for existing URLs, and a strategy for incorporating the organization’s new logo and name into the overall design of the websites.
Guidelines for Submission
In addition to a brief portfolio of the work you have done in Drupal development, include in your submission
- A detailed project plan
- A project budget
- An estimated timeline
Selection Criteria
The successful proposal will demonstrate not only expertise in user experience development for Drupal-based websites on a variety of platforms, but also attentiveness to the needs of the organization in its transition from the American Philological Association to the Society for Classical Studies. Specifically, this includes, but is not limited to:
- Previous experience in planning and implementing custom Drupal themes
- Specific plans for improving the design and navigation of the organization’s websites for mobile and traditional platforms
- Involvement of the Information Architect and members of an advisory subcommittee of elected officers in the development process
- Ease of use and administration of the single login system
- Degree of technical support and maintenance provided during the implementation of the new theme and any custom modules developed in the process
NOTE: The text of this RFP may be found on the APA's site in HTML or PDF.
