TYPE: Custom Website Design & Development
CLIENT: Community High School District 117
The Community Experience
The Superintendent and Director of Technology at Community High School District 117 settle for nothing except excellence. What they wanted from their website was no different. They found themselves frustrated because they could see all of the amazing things happening around the District, but didn't have a modern, intuitive site to showcase that excellence to their stakholders: the students, parents, staff and community members. We met with them and listened as their Technology Committee laid out where their former site lacked and some of the ideas for the future. One of their main concerns was they needed the ability to hand of all content management to their on-staff content creators. We built a site that allows for the user mamangement of the school's staff, complete control of their menus systems, editiable regions on their homepages, smart document management relationships among a bunch of other features.
Simple, Elegant Design
As with every project, we started with wireframe design options. CHSD117 wanted a robust, flexible and easy-to-use design that always took advantage of every pixel on the viewport. During this phase we hashed out some of the features and how they would work like the smart menus and teacher profiles.
Easy Document Management
If you didnt know, school district have a massive amount of document coming and going on a daily basis. From parking permit forms to immunization forms. Some documents have an added layer of specificity and are unique to a certain school, department or teacher. We noticed that while there's some uniqueness, the documents are often re-used or need by other content-creators, so we built the site so everyone that uses the site can relate any document to their needs. Creating a relatable pool of all documents.
Smart Menus
The menu system needed to be just as flexible as the document management system. The menus are fully customizable at both the District and school level, they stand separate but are controlled centrally allowing for each entitity to share menu options. The smart menus also stand as domain-type pages allowing CHSD117 to clearly offer content to each type of stakeholder. The students see what they are looking for and the parents and community find their specific content the same way.
Giving Each Teacher a Home
CHSD117 added a new layer to their new site by giving each educator and staffer the option to manage their own profile. Virtually creating a content-creator that take the site to the granular level of students and parents in each specific class. Educators can update their vital information, post blog-like entries, set weekly schedules, add a document repository, choose to add a contact form or upload-homework form and much more.
Instant Blog Karma
CHSD117 wanted to future-proof their blog options. While they knew what they wanted now, they wantex to make sure it was easy to easily prop-up single-standing blogs in the future. We built a structure channel that is used in tandem with a content channel. The structural entries provide the house for the content. Now getting a blog up and running for CHSD117 is very simple.
Modular Tabbing for Vitals
How do you offer valuable real estate to that infomation that is essential but not used often or content that is used all of the time but would clutter the site with link lists? We solved this problem for CHSD117 by creating customizable modular tabs for content like addresses and phone numbers, search bars or quick links. Offering a very small real estate footprint but alway right in-front of the site users.