When we were approached by the Examiner to build their 2012 Campaign site, we knew content delivery and great design were top priorities. Built in Drupal 7 using OpenPublish, the Examiner's 2012 Campaign site was launched in conjunction with a sponsorship of one of the most widely watched campaign debates in the election year cycle.
By utilizing OpenPublish in Drupal 7 we were able to build a publishing platform that could easily hand high traffic spikes while still managing overall high daily traffic.
We incorporated existing elements of the Examiner's branding into our design work by improving prominence and breathing new life into the underutilized, yet beautifully designed Examiner logo, which represents a strong symbol of patriotism for our client.
Our team was also focused on keeping the design very usable and accessible while emphasizing the patriotism of the brand. Given the content-heavy offerings of the site, our team was able to develop a hierarchy that was content-focused and emphasized the frequent updates in election news coverage.
To improve workflow for the editorial side on the back end, we streamlined content creation forms and took advantage of the improvements in the admin UI in Drupal 7. This project also involved two third party integrations to maximize content curation and timeliness. For the election specific nature of the site, we used an open source data provider for election data, Vote Smart, to map election data sets with content for easier editorialization by the Examiner staff.
"The Examiner staff was devoting a lot of time to content curation, so by integrating drag & drop section fronts from the upcoming OpenPublish 3.0 release, we were able to dramatically simplify the content management process," said Joel Sackett, project manager, explained. "Through smart integrations we've been able to supplement breadth of coverage beyond what a small editorial team would typically be able to develop."
