e-fellows.net receives upgrade for its portal platform
Even one year ago, there was a big question mark over our website relaunch. Is the Ibexa CMS really a suitable system? Is silver.solutions a suitable partner? Can such a big project really be realised in only six months? Can this hotchpotch of almost 5,000 articles that has accrued in ten years of editorial work really be imported into a new system without suffering major losses?
At the end of October we knew more. Somehow, it all worked out, and in the first few crazy days before and after the relaunch I couldn’t quite believe it myself. The editors got used to the new backend, which is much more intuitive and has more options, surprisingly quickly, and our events experts are happy with the new and really rather flexible appointment class – finally, they are able to manage their recruiting events on the website without having to use two outdated systems. And the events look good, too! One of the things I myself am happy about is the many extensions, which, for instance, allow us to carry out more in-depth web analysis. I am also happy about the fact that finally we have a comment function, which connects the website content with our lively community.
This is of course to a large part thanks to silver.solutions. What I particularly liked about the collaboration was the solution-oriented approach of our committed and hard-working project manager, but also his kind nature. And so we came to work together in an ambitious but also genuinely friendly manner. And when things became more difficult, general manager Frank Dege – who is a real trooper – was always there to help out. Of course, when you are dealing with such vast projects things don’t always run smoothly. For example, the implementation of the search engine revealed more errors in the core of the software than we had thought. That’s quite stressful. But it’s all part of it. There are no IT projects that don’t involve a few brainteasers.
Finally, the relaunch was one of the most successful if not the most successful IT project during my six years at e-fellows.net. That’s why we are happy to continue working with silver.solutions.
Lukas Oldenburg, Leitung Content & Community e-fellows.net GmbH & Co. KG
Overview
The aim of the project was to relaunch the e-fellows.net portal using Ibexa's CMS and a slightly updated design. Furthermore, the extensive and complex former content was to be migrated from the old system. Other project goals included connecting a number of functions from a third-party framework, creating an extensive appointment class as well as improved SEO options.
The solution in detail
The website is organised into eight categories, differentiated by colour. In the CMS a comprehensive serial logic was implemented for articles and events. For the variable configuration of the overview pages (homepage, category welcome page etc.), a CMS extension is be used with more than 20 different blocks. This allows teaser content to be rotated daily for instance.
To transfer existing data to the new system, an extensive XML import for more than 4,000 articles, 10,000 elements and 7,000 images was implemented. Here, the content was radically standardised and structured so that the old data can be adequately integrated into the new and expanded website.
Furthermore, a number of extensions were implemented for editors, such as short URLs, embedding of box elements into articles, any amount of nesting and special custom tags and custom attributes in the online editor. Articles can be published and hidden in a controlled manner. On average, 15 to 20 editors work in the system at the same time.
In addition to the article class, the central function for e-fellows.net was an extensive appointment class, which was redesigned for the relaunch. As a result, the editors are now able to enter all the information about e-fellows.net’s career events into the CMS, to present it flexibly using various frontend lists and to link it to external application and registration systems using a dynamic application button.
Users are involved via a comment and rating function associated with the individual articles as well as via a community area. The community area itself will be operated via an external framework; however, questions from the community, for instance, can be embedded directly into the articles through a particular interface.
To ensure that users can register with the community and on the website at the same time, the login is handled using a single sign-on via the external framework. Rights are managed by the powerful rights and roles system of the CMS based on the roles of users within the community system.
jQuery and jQuery tools are used to attractively integrate texts, images and videos, for example the Nivo Slider for slideshows with images. The JW Player is used for videos.
The powerful search engine has a particular significance at e-fellows.net. While usually the search engie is only used for website and product search, in this project the search engine also serves to provide data to overview pages, RSS feeds and a portal system. As a result, all kinds of content can be sorted across classes. In addition to the full-text search, there is also a search by tags.
Search engine optimisation and web analysis was particularly important in this project. Standard features such as SEO URLs are supported by the CMS as standard. For every article, the editors are able to individually define URLs, title, meta tags and different canonical tags. The functions of the URL redirection were significantly extended. Even after the switch to the new platform all old address still work and redirect users to the relevant new pages.
HTML-5 elements improve content indexing. Various tracking versions were implemented for detailed analysis and optimised for Google Analytics. To ensure that a large portal like e-fellows.net keeps performing well, a number of cache optimisations were performed. For instance, select overlay lightboxes with Ajax functionality load content at runtime if needed, while the rest of the page is loaded from the cache.
The result
By switching to the new platform, the e-fellows network now has a powerful platform for its content. Through open interfaces, external systems can be connected and the website can be integrated into an overall information infrastructure. All old data can be imported with minimum data loss and structurally improved so that they integrate into the new system smoothly. SE optimisation and extensive web analysis options will help e-fellows to further improve their content in the search engines. Using many specifically tailored extensions silver.solutions was able to meet the client’s needs and simplify the job of the editors.
