During an election year, the City of Terre Haute wanted to increase usability for constituents, promote the current administration’s work and add a new and refreshed look to the local government’s site.
The City of Terre Haute had been running their public-facing website on Plone 3.3 and wanted to leverage the most recent technology improvements from the Plone community by upgrading to Plone 5. Responsive design, enhanced performance and a positive end-user experience were high on the list of concerns.
The municipal team was looking for a collaborative relationship with a Plone development team who would provide end-user training, design assistance, mentoring and support.
Six Feet Up was selected to implement the new look, assist with site performance and responsiveness, and roll out upgrades that would promote constituent interaction with the site. Six Feet Up also provided guidance on hardware optimization and theming, as well as offered best practices training for the City’s content contributors.
Upgrade to Plone 5
We created a fresh buildout, then JSONified the export and used Transmogrifier for the content import. We provided guidance on best practices for the media content migration.
Performance Advantages
We performed a series of load tests to provide before-and-after comparisons between the old public-facing website and the new one. We saw a 92% improvement in average response time and an 81% reduction in page load failure rates.
Theming
We provided guidance on an ideal responsive Plone 5 theme. Once the theme was chosen, we worked closely with the City’s steering committee on wireframes to brand the theme in accordance with Terre Haute’s branding guidelines. These ensured that both parties were on the same page, ensured that high-traffic areas of the site were easy to find and helped identify potential areas for concern early on. Custom templates were developed to provide a consistent look and feel across the site.
After just 3 months of work, the new City of Terre Haute website was deployed to production on new, optimized servers. New, fresh content is easier to add & manage by the site administrators and is presented in a faster & friendlier format for the local constituents. This latest version of the City of Terre Haute’s website features a cleaner and more modern, responsive design.
Six Feet Up, Inc.
11208 Windermere Blvd.
Fishers, IN 46037 - USA
Phone: +1 (317) 861-5948
Email: info@sixfeetup.com
