Temple University: Lewis Katz School of Medicine

Education Web Development Project Brief

Becoming frustrated with their static HTML site, the Temple Medical team wanted a fresh, engaging site that was easy to both update and navigate for visitors. Made up of 30+ departments, the site needed to find a way to display and organize all the information that needed to be displayed, without having to resort to a multi-site or separate site distros.

Working with Transit Authority Figures for design and our Drupal partner, Eastern Standard, Knectar deployed their education web development expertise to create a site that leverages a host of complex technologies to create a flexible, yet easy-to-use system for everyday users.

Unique content types allow for both organization of information, and promotion of information to the places where it will have the most impact. A lengthy design and IA process resulted in pages that are truly flexible enough to fit almost any type of content that needs to be displayed. A hearty library of different call to action blocks, responsive tables, and more makes for a vivid, engaging site.

Technology

Built on the Acquia Cloud platform, this implementation allows for several teams to be working in unison on the site, and makes the deployment from testing to production nearly seamless.

Behind the scenes of the site itself, a custom menu implementation allows for regular content editors to specify a page as a “root” page, which then assigns the following menu children to a new main navigation. This functionality means that each of the 30+ departments that fall under the Temple Medical umbrella can have their own “mini sites”, complete with unique home pages, inner pages, faculty lists, promoted content, and more. This implementation also keeps the branding and design of these department sections within the standards, and does away with the hassle of maintaining a multi-site or distro implementation at a server level.

After being put through a rigorous testing period, the site is accessible and fully functional on almost any device, from the largest desktop monitor to the smallest smartphone screen. For those devices that are too outdated to support the site, a jQuery pop-up provides visitors with instructions for continuing.

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Collaborator: Transit Authority Figures , Eastern Standard