The Princeton University Rowing Program selected us to help build their online community. They have several types of readers and wanted to be able to engage all of them with relevant content. There is a great deal of public information, such as race schedule, directions, results, pictures and videos. There is information for potential recruits on the programs, the university and the requirements.

There is also information which only a select group of people should be able to see: the current rowers and parents want to be able to see their workouts and communicate with coaches. The alumni want to share personal updates and contact information with each other, not the entire world. The coaches want to send out newsletters, but with the ability to select who is allowed to receive them.

Finally, the most important part was that the coaches need to run the site without the help of programmers. They need to be able to write and format new articles, update email addresses, adjust menus, upload pictures and videos – all without ever leaving the site or having to understand HTML.

For this project, we chose Drupal, our favorite open-source Content Management System and designed a theme based on Marinelli. This allowed us to modify every detail of the site to meet the specific requirements of the client while at the same time not having to redesign the wheel. Ultimately, the coaches are very satisfied with the look and feel as well as the ease-of-use.

What’s next? We will be integrating CiviCRM into the back end of the website so that the Princeton University Rowing Association can track and manage their donor database. It’s an exciting project and we are looking forward to it!

Please feel free to check out the website at: http://crew.princeton.edu and contact us with any questions or comments.

The NorthWest International Rowing Association is a group a rowing clubs from the United States and Canada who compete for some of the oldest trophies on the continent. Since the clubs are spread out across two countries, they needed a central location to store information about the clubs and the races.

All of the members of the board are volunteers and all of the club dues go directly to racing. Therefore, the priority of the NWIRA was value for money. They requested a site which was simple to use for both the editors and the readers. We set up a Drupal installation with minimal customization on a shared server. Since then, we have provided security updates and the occasional support call. The site has successfully integrated the information from all the clubs into one central location at great value for all the members.

The mission of the Cascade Meadow Wetlands & Environmental Science Center is to establish a regional resource for environmental education, with an initial focus on energy, water and wetlands.

Since Cascade Meadow is not yet open to the public, their first step was to create a website which could educate the community on the goals for the project. Now that construction has begun, the clients are updating the site at every new stage.

Once the Center is operational, a new, fully-interactive website will go live. The staff will be able publish information and send newsletters. Members of the community will be able to see what’s going on (often in real-time!) and communicate with the center as well as with each other. Please continue to check back regularly.

The Rochester Athletic Club approached us to expand upon and support an initial website design. They were looking for newsletter capabilities and community management. Since the original site was designed using a Joomla back-end, we had no problem supporting their site.

Although we primarily use Drupal for our large community sites, if our client has a preference for another Content Management System, we are happy to find resources with expertise in their system of choice. Drupal, Joomla, WordPress and every other website back-end is simply a tool for a specific job. Certain tools are more appropriate for certain applications and the right one depends on your vision for your website. We are always willing to suggest solutions based on our expertise, but if you have a goal in mind and a path to get there, we are happy to help you along that path without getting in the way.