We've been very fortunate to have done the fox trot with some wonderful organizations over the years.

Portfolio | Web Design

Portland Public Schools

Final Output

Webpage Design (XHTML, CSS, JavaScript)

Project Brief

Portland Public Schools was looking to replace their existing table based, one column news page. The page was housed in a content management system that had been purchased by the district several years before. Because of the limited feature set available in the CMS, the news page was unable to grow past its current state. As a result, the brief called for the development of a system that would be dynamic and flexible, with the ability to highlight news, press releases, lighter, more positive stories and advertise upcoming district events.

Solution

After investigating the limitations of the current CMS, it was decided that the new page would be taken out of that management system and independently maintained and updated by the department through the use of Adobe Contribute. By using Contribute as a so called CMS, the new page could be built using lean, tableless XHTML and CSS while allowing for the establishment of a user-based workflow system-a feature that had desired, but was lacking in their existing CMS.

The solution to the brief came in the form of a three column layout that housed navigaton, a wide news column for more serious district news/press releases, and a narrower column with a new feature called, “What's Going On!” that featured lighter/more positive district news pieces.

Other new features included an event calendar, multimedia clips and national, education-based news, that was scraped from various sites through the use of Javascript. In order to further satisfy the brief's requriements, the page also housed banner and ad spaces used to feature upcoming district events and image-based navigation to other areas of interest on the district site.