New Drupal website and member portal for leading immunology membership body
British Society of Immunology (BSI) is a large membership body whose mission is to support our immunology community in driving scientific discovery and making a positive impact on health. They have over 4,300 members representing the diverse community of people working in immunology from academia and the health service to government and the corporate world in the UK and across the world.
THE BRIEF:
When the British Society of Immunology decided they needed to upgrade their Drupal 7 website, they wanted to take the opportunity to make some improvements to how they manage their large membership base, which come in different membership categories, and to implement a proper membership portal.
Moore-Wilson have a long standing relationship with the BSI and we have built and supported a number of sites over the years for them, so we were delighted to be given the opportunity to rebuild their site. As their whole website portfolio is Drupal, it was a requirement to build the new site in Drupal CMS as well.
They explored the options around the member portal over some time and then selected a CRM provider who specialise in large membership organisations and could provide a suitable membership portal.
The brief for the website centred around the following key areas:
- Build a website that is well structured and easy to navigate despite the large amounts of content
- Revised site navigation to improve user journeys and overall digital experience
- An updated design
- Translations for certain areas of the site
- Seamless integration with the membership portal in terms of APIs and SSO (single sign on)
- Special member features
As well as specific meetings with other third party providers, we held fortnightly sprint progress meetings with the client, and provided training to the editorial teams along the way as well. This meant that we could shoot down any issues very quickly.
"THE PROJECT:
We undertook a very detailed content audit, which made migrating the content across seamless. We agreed on a schedule and launch date with the client for September/October (which was pretty much set in stone as they then go into a very busy period around their annual congress).
Once the specification and designs were signed off, we built a html prototype so that the client would be able to see what the design would look like on different browsers and screen sizes.
With a project of this size and complexity, it generally makes sense to start with the more complex areas, in order to reduce the risk, but we also needed to get the CMS up and running quickly so that the content population and translations could get underway.
As well as specific meetings with other third party providers, we held fortnightly sprint progress meetings with the client, and provided training to the editorial teams along the way as well. This meant that we could shoot down any issues very quickly.
The launch was planned carefully to cause as little disruption as possible and then we worked closely with our hosting team to ensure a smooth deployment, with hardly any downtime at all.
THE RESULT:
The new Drupal 9 website launched on time, and the client is very happy with the result. They have had some very positive feedback from their members as well.
We are delighted to keep working with BSI and are looking forward to supporting and hosting the site.
