The Forsyth Institute

Project Brief

A not-for-profit research organization with global exposure, Forsyth needed a fully-responsive, easily-managed site to highlight the incredible work that they do to further oral health research around the world.

One main “must have” on their initial list was the ability to create separate “mini Lab sites”: groups of pages within the main Forsyth website that have a unique look and feel, and even a separate navigation menu, so that Scientists can manage their own personal lab sites.

Pairing a user-friendly Drupal CMS with Stoltze Design’s designs, Knectar partnered to provide Forsyth with a modern and intuitive MA website redesign that gets their message across to all users, no matter what device they’re viewing the site on. With just a handful of content types, Forsyth site administrators can create every page they need with just a few clicks of a button, and the system does the rest. Take a look at the Technology Notes for a look into the complex user role generations that occur automatically.

Technology

The cleanly-designed front end of Forsyth’s site hides a complex (but still user-friendly!) system of content and user generation on the Drupal back end.

To create a new lab site and associated Scientist, the main site administrator has to go through one simple series of steps. First, a Scientist needs to be created. The creation of the Scientist node results in the creation of a Lab Manager (with the same name), which then creates an unpublished mini Lab site. An email notification is sent out to the new Scientist/Lab Manager, who can then login and create their new lab sub-section, as well as add additional Lab Managers to help manage the lab content and lab menus.

This user creation and node association system is built using Organic Groups.

On the front-end, a centrally-anchored carousel means that the unique images are completely visible and well-scaled on all devices, from large-screen monitors to small smartphones.

Other Knectar Drupal Development projects for universities:

Collaborator: Stoltze Design