In 2016, my team took on the challenge of modernizing the Drupal 7 theme of the GW Drupal platform.
The problem?
Our legacy Drupal theme was rigid and visually dated. While the brand was technically present, a poor backend content management experience and inflexible page IA made it difficult for many site owners to deliver a user-friendly experience that aligned with GW’s brand strategy.
The solution?
We abandoned our legacy 3-6-3 page layout structure. We embraced the on-trend experience of full bleed visuals and a wider body content section that took advantage of the visual real estate of larger monitors.
We also reduced the rigidity of using structured fields to drive content entry; instead we expanded the availability of tools directly in the WYSIWYG content editor. This allowed our site owners a more flexible canvas to deliver on GW’s brand message and to create visually engaging content that more effectively reaches their target audience.
The result?
Site owner happiness skyrocketed and traffic to websites across the university increased. In the central marketing team, we also launched successful websites that drove a billion-dollar capital campaign, our popular annual holiday video, and revamped the university’s daily news and monthly magazine websites. The new theme became our guidepost for future theme refreshes.