InFocus Corporate Site Product Catalog

Technologies Used

Introduction

InFocus needed a site-wide refresh done for a summer conference and was running behind due to design changes and expanding scope. The new CMS needed to be user-friendly enough to allow content writers and site administrators to modify the site without developer assistance.

Problem Set

We needed to accomplish a site-wide redesign in 30 days to meet a conference deadline. The ultimate goal was a completely updated website with improved features, cleanup of legacy code, and repairing features that had stopped working. The site was written with PHP and MySQL, and the technology stack and infrastructure would need to be administered and maintained by internal staff. The graphic design was provided by an external resource and was ready to be implemented.

Solution

Parthenon recommended a strategy that split up the problem into two phases. First the site would be restyled with the new design. Work would be triaged based on site traffic, page by page, and pages that were not a priority would not receive a full redesign. Other pages, and assets like the page header and footer, would be given priority and completely reworked for the 30 day release.

The second phase would completely rebuild the site from scratch with an updated CMS that would give staff the interface needed to made maintenance possible by any user. We chose CraftCMS, the most user-friendly, secure PHP based CMS available at the time. This new site would use the same redesign, updated with further changes requested based on feedback from the conference about the new design.

Final Product

We completed the initial redesign of the site in time for the conference and tested the look and feel of the site across desktop browsers, mobile devices and specialize hardware made by the client. Once it had been fully tested, we transferred the changes from staging to the production environment.

After the conference, a Craft CMS version of the site was started and built around the user-interface components created by the design agency. We took our time making sure the final result met all expectations and would be maintainable by the staff in charge of the site.