Project: City of Huntsville
Visual Identity system
Web Design + Dev
Cross-site Integration
Performance audits
Over the last several years, I’ve had the distinct privilege of working with the City of Huntsville to rebuild and expand their web presence. This started with the development of their main website, HuntsvilleAL.gov, and has evolved over time to include the design and development of three additional websites, a major retrofit to the main, and ongoing maintenance of their network of websites.
Along the way, I’ve had the opportunity to research and build several tools to support the city’s web efforts and ensure performance and stability for the end user. This includes the development of Apollo Data Services, a headless WordPress installation that allows web admins to configure content used across their network of sites from a single location.
To use the data provided by Apollo Data Services and keep every site in sync visually and data-wise, I built the Apollo Framework, a framework contained within the site’s theme that provides a library of common, custom-design design patterns and typography specifications, common dev functions, and integrates with Apollo Data Services to pull data for certain components.
Apollo Data Services was created to centralize the configuration of shared layout components, alerts, and available options for aggregate newsfeeds used across the City of Huntsville’s network of sites.
The Apollo framework was developed to keep each city website in-sync and on-brand. It includes the assets needed to build uniform design components and layouts, and integrates with Apollo Data Services to sync information.
Custom map-building capabilities, powered by the Google Maps api, were provided for both HuntsvilleAL.gov and The Big Picture, allowing site admins to easily build complex maps consisting of map pins, polygons, ellipses, and lines (optionally snapped to the nearest roadway). These foundation for these capabilities was eventually released as a free plugin, CMB2 RoadWay Segments.
Through Apollo Data Services, alerts can be targeted broadly to appear across one or multiple websites, or granularly, appearing only on specific pages of specific sites. Alerts are loaded via a client-side script, so that alerts have minimal impact on site performance and cachability.
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