Sustainability Site Gets a Facelift

By peterm, 22 September, 2010

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I've been working with the Campus Sustainability office to identify how we might make some changes to their look and feel as well as add some functionality. They've been limited by the old campus template and need to get a fresh look without the use of the new campus template, which won't be available to them on the short term. I've prototyped some basic changes using the Aquia Marina theme + Fusion to quickly get some information re-architected into blocks, create a stronger visual identity through increasing the use of images and added a "projects" content type that can be used to store data for the Project Clearinghouse.

The Project Clearinghouse will be a repository to hold ideas, projects and community needs. We're still working on the requirements definitions. I've created three forms using the same content type by creating a custom module to toggle fields on and off where they are needed. Projects get all the fields; ideas gets a subset of the fields. There are some basic views to demonstrate how a student might approach the site, scan a list of projects they might want to become involved in and make contact with the Campus Sustainability office to get project leader contact information.

The workflow behind the project clearinghouse allows for anonymous users to gain an account with privileges sufficient to create a project submission. Workflow alerts the staff that we have incoming data which is then reviewed and moved to a different status upon acceptance.

We're also introducing charting to the site. Metrics are a core component of measuring progress in the various areas of sustainability, so we're working on how we'll capture and display data in a meaningful way. Our initial work is using the Drupal module FusionCharts for simple data display. Ideally, I'd like to expose via web services data we hold in other enterprise systems (FacilitiesLink, FAMIS, Energy and Water management) to develop realtime dashboard metrics. See the FusionCharts article for more info.

Next we'll be looking at how to better integrate the Campus Sustainability Plan (currently in PDF) into the content of the site. This suggests a navigation system across the areas contained in the plan. We looked at the idea of using the Drupal book module to create hierarchal pages, but it feels too limiting. We may take another pass at this via the menuing system.

As we enter the third year of the site, we're starting to look at other costs associated with maintaining and developing. This includes budget development for custom programming, recruitment of interns with the right set of skills and looking forward to where we want the site to go over the next three years.