Custom Website Design Project for El Dorado DA
Our team helped build a collection of 4 websites, which are each accessible by the same CMS and scrape live data from a database to display the most current arrests in the El Dorado County.
El Dorado DA Custom Website Design & Client Information
- Client: El Dorado DA
- Date:August 2017
- Website: El Dorado DA
- Technologies:
- HTML5
- CSS3
- CMS
jQuery
Bootstrap
Secure Socket Layer (SSL)
- Devices:
- Compatible Browsers:
The El Dorado District Attorney (DA) Needed a Single Consolidated Website Solution
The DA of El Dorado county in California had an existing state run website and a completely separate WordPress blog with custom features that updated daily arrest log information among other things. The state run website was easy to edit, but limited in how customized the site’s content could be displayed. Their team wanted a CMS with a simple User Interface (UI), robust control over the site’s structure and design, and a consolidated location so that content could be found seamlessly between several different domains (each unique domain used for specific purposes).
Summary of Website Needs:
- Easy to Use CMS UI
- Consolidated UI (one login to edit 4 sites)
- Seamless design between sites
Our Team Proposed a Single UI Within Our Custom Content Management System (CMS)
Our custom CMS already had a simple UI and allows us to inject code into any section on any website. Additionally, our in house developers were able to create custom modules to scrape data off of an existing website for display. Further, our team could write custom PHP to scrape the needed Arrest Log data on an automated schedule, which would provide users with the latest information, but with a design that was uniform throughout the new design.
Summary of Recommendations:
- Capitol Tech Solution’s Custom CMS
- PHP Script to replace existing page scraping script and would write directly to the CMS on automated schedule
- Single design with identical navigation menu for seamlessly moving between 4 domain names
Development On Test Server and Intermittent Soft Launch of Sites
Each website’s complexity varied to some degree, which resulted in some of them being ready early into the project and others launching closer to the project’s hard launch date. The easier integrations were all due to simple CMS injections into unique domain names. The Arrest Log features, which involved PHP scraping and XSLT data parsing, was more complex and took longer to complete. When all 3 pages were ready to go live our team then went live with the final website design, which was used for viewers to find the other domain with and was the primary domain used in marketing.
The New Website Design & CMS is Faster, Easier to Navigate, and Seamlessly Consolidates All the Data for Viewers
Our CMS launches the scraped data much faster than the client’s previous WordPress blog and allows them to show all of their content without it being so visibly different in design. The CMS UI was easy for the team to learn and use. When they needed some unexpected connections to parts of their website our team could quickly and easily add the code injections as available areas for them to edit.
