Website Development and Public Registry Integration
Four of the land and water boards in the NWT (Mackenzie Valley, Sahtu, Gwich’in and Wek’èezhìi) needed to each have their own distinct website, with the ability to manage content centrally for all of them in one place with a single sign-on for each administrator of the system. Furthermore, they needed it to integrate with their public registry, which initially started as an independent website, and later on needed to become a seamless part of their site.
Client Needs
- Single login for all admins, with ability to assign admins to all 4, or individual websites to manage content
- Ability to publish some content the same across all 4 sites, and other content individual to a given site
- Ability to access and search public registry and online review systems
- Up-to-date, modern and mobile friendly design
Approach
Initially built on Wordpress, it quickly became apparent that not all of their functional needs could be met with that platform, so it was re-developed on Drupal 7. This platform allowed the site to more easily adapt and be customized according to the client's changing needs, including some of the custom development required later on to fully integrate their public registry system. When they updated their Public Registry system to use a new SharePoint back-end, we worked with the company hosting that to build a seamless integration between the two systems so users could search and access all registry content directly on the public website. In 2020 the site was rebuilt on Drupal 9 to bring the technology up to date.
Results
Continued investment and development over the years has resulted in the Land and Water Boards having a website built on a solid technology stack that offers them not only an enterprise class content management system, but a secure and easily maintainable core system that will last for years to come. The Drupal 9 platform provides them with a robust and easy to use content management system with various pre-templated content types they can add to their pages for reach and appealing content. In addition, the public registry integration allows them to meet their mandate to provide publicly accessible information without compromising on the user experience.
