Municipal Web Service - Gliwice

Last, but not least, lack of upgrades meant the loss of optimization. When the Service was initially created a few years ago, it most likely matched the speed and response time of the websites and systems at the time. However, technology changes very rapidly, especially on the Internet. In short, what was fast and the norm back then, today is considered very slow and ineffective. This can be seen very clearly in the speed in which modern mobile websites load, versus the speed in which a full desktop site loads on a mobile browser. The speed of loading and experience is greatly diminished. Moreover, lack of optimizations also leads to lower SEO ranking, as modern search engines, such as Google, penalize unresponsive, slow-loading websites by lowering their organic search result ranking.

Third, the graphics and design desperately needed an overhaul. The Municipal Web Service is the first point of contact for tourists and potential investors and needs to convey a wide variety of information conveniently and transparently. First impressions matter, and especially when these impressions can make a lasting difference in the local economy.

Second, just like WordPress, Drupal is open-source. This can result in sizable potential savings, as the Customer is not obligated to pay any licensing fees. Moreover, in comparison to WordPress which uses 3^rd-party, often paid plugins to extend the basic CMS functionality, all functionality will be delivered along with the project. This means that in the long-run, the Customer will not end up paying for additional subscription services.

Third, the Municipal Web Service is a government site which will handle large amounts of information and especially personally-identifiable data. For such portals security is the key, and this is where Drupal CMS shines.

Whereas Content Management System such as WordPress is geared more towards user-friendliness and usability, Drupal is known for its security-mindedness. This is not to say that WordPress is insecure in any way – indeed WordPress is a secure platform. However, given that certain design choices have to be made by project developers, it is often difficult to provide top-notch security while providing extreme user-friendliness as well. For example, 3^rd-party plugins sometimes conflict or are not as secure as WordPress authors would like them to be. And this is the main reason why although initially secure, WordPress often ends up being the most hacked CMS out there. We cannot afford such a situation in a government-run site. As such, Drupal is a logical choice in the aspect of portal security.

After we chose Drupal for the entire Service foundation, we went along with designing a new user interface with a responsive layout. This was a direct response to the ageing UI and lack of site responsiveness problem outlined above. Creating a responsive layout has several benefits, aside from the obvious aesthetic reasons.

First of all, responsive sites remove the need to update two or more sites when updating a single piece of information. In the early days of desktop and mobile website design, web developers often chose to create two websites instead of one – one for mobile and one for desktop. As they were not based on the same database instance, updating information on one site also required doubling the work and updating the same information on the other site as well. A tedious task, however, necessary.

Second, modern search engines such as Google and Bing penalize for lack of responsiveness. As Google and Microsoft want to deliver the best experience to their users, they focus on the speed and proper rendering of each website displayed in their organic search results. Lack of a responsive site means lowered SEO score.

Going along, we extended the Service to include two additional sections: Tourism and Culture. While working on this expansion, we realized that most likely two separate teams will be updating these sections. Some teams perhaps might not even be in the same building. As such, we needed to create a simple, streamlined back-end system for editors, reviewers and administrators in mind.

And so we did. Rather than relying on separate platforms and instances, we combined the entire Service administration into one, centralized panel. This has several benefits. First of all, all users will always log in to the same panel and will see the same interface, regardless of which section of the website they will be updating. A simple step, but a time-saving one: relying on the same interface cuts employee learning time.

In the back-end, unified administration and logical UI now makes updating content and managing user permissions a breeze. Regardless of how many editors, proofreaders, managers and contributors there are, all employees can benefit from a standardized, intuitive interface. This greatly cuts down on the learning curve and makes support and troubleshooting a much easier task. 

Last, but not least, the Municipal Web Service is built to last. As we chose stable and proven technologies – such as Drupal, PHP and MySQL – we can rest assured that the platforms, on which the Service is based upon, will continue receiving security updates, additional features and community support. Moreover, since our code is always standards-compliant, performing future upgrades or expanding functionality will always be possible by anyone with experience in these platforms.