UMN Extension Website

University of Minnesota - Extension Website

Background

As a new developer at the University of Minnesota-Extension, I started mid-project during a complete site redesign. The team and I built a site that serves over 100,000 visitors per week and allows editors to compose complex pages from simple components.

Content Type Modeling

Starting out, I worked with the project team to define and create content types that fit the established information architecture and goals.

Theme Development

I collaboratively developed a Drupal 8 theme to design specifications. To do so, I worked with the designer to identify and break down the design into unique, reusable components. We implemented those components as Paragraphs.

Accordion Component

Accordions and accessibility are central to the refreshed design. To meet the extensive functional and accessibility requirements of the accordions, I wrote a custom JavaScript library.

The accordion library:

• Meets W3 accessibility recommendations
• Updates the URL hash when opened to afford shareable URLS
• Checks for matching accordion hash on page load; if found, scrolls to the accordion and opens it
• Allows links on-page links to open a other accordions on the same page
• Handles multiple groups of accordions on one page
• Can open and close entire groups of accordions

Custom, site-specific modules

I wrote several custom, site-specific modules to meet requirments, including:

• Breadcrumb generation
• Filtered language selection toggle
• Dynamic sidebars pulled from link collections elsewhere on site
• Iframe embed filters for external content

Conclusion

This website now serves over 100,000 visitors per week and allows editors to compose complex pages from simple components.