Posted by hilarymarsh on May 23, 2011 at 7:02pm
My in-house IT department will be building the Drupal works for a redesigned Web site. I'm planning to hire an outside designer and IA to create the new structure and design. My question is, what type of deliverables do the designer and IA need to create to ensure that the things they conceive are buildable in Drupal?
Thank you!
Hilary Marsh
Comments
The good news is that Drupal
The good news is that Drupal is flexible and powerful enough that almost anything is build-able. The bad news is that it's also quite complex, and the amount you're going to struggle with it will be in proportion to both the demands of the design and how experienced your in-house team is with Drupal.
In my organization's case we outsourced both the design and build to a web development firm. Since they know what they're doing with Drupal, and the same team was handling both sides, they were able to give us very clear answers about how our requests fit into the project scope.
my organization also
my organization also outsourced both to one web development firm, which worked out pretty well for us
i'd agree with jason that anything can be done, but also that things can get complicated quickly if you don't provide some pretty detailed specifications on the front end (including some strict guidelines on URL structure); we had detailed wireframes and i spent many days with the lead developer building a functional spec; but things still got dizzying at times (even with them handling the visuals) based on various misunderstandings related to my newness to Drupal and not always sharing the same vocabulary
it might be to your advantage to hire contractors that are Drupal specialists; i'd be leery of hiring someone who just says they CAN do Drupal, unless you're doing something pretty basic
there's definitely plenty of scope for getting tangled up if you have people with varying, or limited, knowledge of Drupal collaborating
occasionally, our guys built something that was a good solution, only we'd been unclear in describing the problem; so we had to tape over a few things where the solution had actually become a problem; we also had some cases where we thought they were going to build something we hadn't actually asked for; depending on your budget and time horizons, this is better to worry about earlier than fix later, when it can become pretty confusing if your site's complex enough
more knowledgeable people can correct me or elaborate but it was a little baffling for a Drupal beginner (me) to understand how what you might call infrastructure relates to presentation when dealing with Drupal (it's a completely different mindset from plain old HTML and some simpler CMSs) -- more layers of indirection; if your site is simple enough that you're not that concerned HOW you get the presentation you want, you can have your outside contractor specify, develop visuals and let your IT guys build it; but depending on their level of experience with various CMSs, the seemingly simple concept of pages being generated from templates could become more complex than what they had in mind -- which could makes things more complicated than needed for maintainers as well
My experience with deliverables
Hi Hilary,
I was hired to both design and manage development of our site in a CMS (moving from static HTML pages). I chose Drupal. After that I began to survey the Communications team, other internal groups, and our external partners, especially our PR contractors, to find out what they felt worked in the old site, what needs went unfilled, what functionality was most important to include in the redesign. Normally our audiences might be surveyed; in our case we were not well known, so a large proportion of users were job-seekers, so I didn't survey them, since we wanted to attract different audiences with the new site.
The Comms web team (which "owned" the public website) also initiated a content audit, which helped influence development of user-centered navigation and information architecture for the site, etc. The content audit included both written and visual content. We added almost all content to the site during the development process. Your experience might be different if your content can be migrated from your current to the new site. Ours was entirely rewritten, so it was more cost-effective for us to add it to the site.
I audited our partners' sites as well, to see if interesting trends showed up (especially in redesigned sites in our field). I noted which sites used/didn't use "Home" in navigation, which ones used a home page image rotator, whether publications were separate from media resources, etc.
With that information in hand, I wrote the RFP and requirements list, began developing wireframes, hired developers, and began working with them.
Your designer and information architect will need the same information from you, or will make suggestions if you prefer. I'd suggest that you take a look at the types of content you will need in the site. Will you need a blog (or many)? Will you need information that can be stored in a database and needs structured display? Will you have news articles? Publications? eCommerce? Etc.
In our case, for instance, we needed a way to track clinical trials, to show progress, results, etc. so tabular data was required. This was a special type of content, which therefore became a "content type". Your developers will want to know what types of content you will need, and will help you determine how to display these types of content on your site.
We also wanted to display Executive staff and Board members in a grid of photos, with clickable links to a full page per person. That became a content type.
Does this help, or are you looking for different information? Please let us know so we can help you further.
Best, Marilyn
New book that might interest you
I don't know if you've seen this site: Planning Drupal Sites by Cindy McCourt. The concept has been turned into a book, which should be out in July 2011 (with luck it will be available at CapitalCamp, the upcoming DC metro DrupalCamp on July 22-23, 2011.
The website, Planning Drupal Sites, introduces planning concepts and guides you through the process of developing your own site plan.
Best, Marilyn