ParentMap
Custom Drupal Website
ParentMap is an online resource written by parents, for parents, that covers experiences at any point of the parenting journey. The folk at ParentMap are dedicated to providing helpful materials, from nourishing recipes to education planning tools to local family and child-friendly activities in the Seattle area. Over the past 14 years, the ParentMap team has worked to build and maintain their website as a source of support for parents and children.
Improving Content Publishing with an Updated Website
The ParentMap team had initially built their website on a Joomla platform, extending it over the years with a Django REST framework and custom modules as their website had grown. Over time, managing aspects of the website had become difficult. For a publisher like ParentMap, not being able to manage their online content efficiently was a critical issue.
After a referral from a previous connection at KCTS 9, we had a kick-off meeting with the ParentMap team to discuss their goals for their website. After a few weeks of scoping and planning the technical solution, we finalized a plan for their development and got the ball rolling.
Migration to a Fresh Drupal 8 Platform
The first stage was migrating the ParentMap website to a new platform, something that would be simpler to manage. We upgraded their website to a Drupal 8 platform; a CMS simple enough that they could manage all content on their website–including menus and custom navigation–but also powerful enough that it could handle the bevvy of event scheduling and customization tools that parents utilized on their website.
Updating Event Scheduling Custom Modules
In the second stage, we used Drupal 8 to clean up the custom modules they had created to manage scheduling for individual events. We built a calendaring system within Drupal that would be much easier for the ParentMap team to edit. We used Drupal Views and the recurrences custom module our Sr. Developer, Jonah Ellison, had created to build on top of the existing date system, customizing their calendaring tool with adjustable filters that parents can use to navigate between event pages.
Designing the ParentMap Website for Mobile Browsing
The third stage was functionally implementing their website’s redesign. Parentmap had worked with a design agency in 2016 to refresh their look and feel. In addition to implementing the new design, our developer, Shawn Adler, also created mobile web designs for ParentMap to make their website mobile responsive. With a majority of ParentMap’s users–active parents who are more likely to look up information on their phones rather than find the time to sit down in front of a desktop–enabling ParentMap for mobile responsive browsing was a critical step in their redesign.
Updates
-
Website migration to a fresh installation of Drupal 8.
-
Custom modules for event scheduling and operating ParentMap's calendaring system.
-
Functional implementation of ParentMap's web design, including new responsive designs.
Content Migration
The fourth stage was migrating ParentMap’s content from their old Joomla database to their new Drupal 8 website. ParentMap had been steadily producing content for the past 14 years, and continued to do so while we built their updated site. To securely migrate the massive amount of content stored on their old website’s database, as well as the content they were continuously producing, we repeatedly used Drupal’s Migrate API, mapping data from the old system.
For years, ParentMap has been an indispensable publication for the community, and as most of the members of our team are both parents and Seattle residents, many of us have used ParentMap before. We're looking forward to continuing as ParentMap's development partner and growing their new web platform.