Blog Archives
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Syndication
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January 25, 2012
New Signature and Viderity Launch National Archives Transcription Pilot Program
By Craig ZingerlineNew Signature is proud to announce the launch of the National Archives Transcription Pilot
Program. New Signature teamed up with Viderity to provide strategic consulting, design and implementation of this new system that was developed for NARA – the National Archives and Records Administration.Developed primary during a one-month development sprint, this application allows users from the public to visit the website and transcribe historical documents that the Archives have in their collection. Users can choose the difficulty level for the transcription and can work on a page by page basis within each document to move the documents along the transcription workflow.
This site was built in Drupal 7 and features a zoom option within pages of the document to allow for image resizing for readability, page locking so that multiple contributors cannot compete for the same page, and a streamlined workflow that enables multiple site visitors to quickly review documents and add their transcriptions and comments about the documents.
Check back regularly for updates to the Pilot program as they progress.
Interested in more information about New Signature, or have a Drupal project you need help with? If so, contact us now.
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January 24, 2012
New Signature Launches Redesigned Equality Michigan website
By New Signature and Bryan Hackett
New Signature is excited to announce the launch of the newly designed Equality Michigan website. The website features a complete overhaul of the design, content organization and information architecture and overall user experience and styling. The website incorporates a robust Take Action section that puts supporters in touch with various officials and law makers as well as information on how to report discrimination or violence. The site also features a Media Center hosting timely and relevant information. Social media integration was included as part of the overall strategy for spreading the word about the organization’s important cause.The website was built on the robust Drupal 7 platform.
Equality Michigan works to achieve full equality and respect for all people in Michigan regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression. Equality Michigan’s number one priority is a fully inclusive, non-discrimination policy by 2014, on the way to full legal equality including full marriage equality. As they work to achieve this change, they will count and counter through advocacy services acts of discrimination from bullying in the schoolyard, to wrongful termination in the workplace, to acts of violence committed against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people in the community.
The redesigned website can be viewed at EqualityMI.org.
Interested in more information about New Signature, or have a Drupal project you need help with? If so, contact us now.
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December 1, 2011
League of Women Voters Launches Redesigned Website
By New Signature
The League of Women Voters has launched a new website that was designed and built by New Signature’s experts. The website is built on the Drupal publishing platform and is built to provide a platform that energizes the League’s efforts in regards to educating voters, registering voters, improving elections and improving government.The website offers visitors a number of interactive features–you can find a local League, contact your elected officials, and the League’s online community. The website also supports offline activities. For example, visitors can become an active volunteer and join their community local or state League and be part of the solution! This helps develop community leaders to participate in order to make the United States a strong, safe and vibrant place to live.
The League of Women Voters is a citizens’ organization that has fought since 1920 to improve our government and engage all citizens in the decisions that impact their lives. We operate at national, state and local levels through more than 800 state and local Leagues, in all 50 states as well in DC, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and Hong Kong.
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November 21, 2011
New Signature Launches Trade Adjustment Assistance Website
By New Signature
The Trade Adjustment Assistance website launched today to help workers start a new chapter. New Signature designed and built this online resource to help explain and promote the Trade Adjustment Assistance program. The project was spearheaded by the AFL-CIO Working for America Institute in collaboration with a number of other partners. The project was funded by the US Department of Labor under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.Since the 1960s, the Trade Adjustment Assistance Program (TAA) has helped millions of trade-impacted workers who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own start a new chapter in the new economy by providing a path for employment growth and opportunity. Administered by the US Department of Labor, the Trade Adjustment Assistance Program is a federally funded program that provides long-term training benefits, health care support, job search and job relocation allowances, and income support for TAA certified workers. Once certified, workers must then separately apply for each benefit. Though the Trade Adjustment Assistance Program doesn’t replace the good job lost due to foreign trade policies, it does help the trade-impacted worker get back on their feet.
The website includes a wide array of information on the program, including compelling video narratives of impacted workers from across the nation.
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November 18, 2011
New Signature Helps Working America Launch NineDemands.com
By Craig Zingerline
New Signature teamed up with Working America to design and launch the “Nine Demands of the 99%” petition website. The web application collects petition signatures from public supporters for the 99% movement going on across the country right now. The application supports co-branded partner pages so that petitions and content management. As of now, Working America has partnered with eight other organizations including Daily Kos, AFL-CIO, National Employment Law Project, Stand With Wisconsin, California Labor Federation, North Carolina State AFL-CIO, Wisconsin Alliance for Retired Americans and AFSCME.The petition page was designed with two clear objectives:
1 Make the petition process straightforward, with a very clear call to action.
2 Integrate social media on both the landing and success pages. This helps to spread the petition reach.
The petition application was created on an accelerated schedule, and went from concept to launch in less than three weeks. The results have been fantastic, with the primary petition page receiving more than 4,400 Facebook likes and shares within 24 hours of launch. This represents a social participation rate of one in four visitors!
The primary petition page received over 4400 Facebook likes and shares within 24 hours of launch. This represents a social participation rate of one in four visitors!
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November 14, 2011
New Signature Teams with Inside Higher Ed to Relaunch Website
By New Signature
New Signature teamed up with long time client Inside Higher Ed to launch the third major iteration of this highly popular online source for news, opinion and jobs for all of higher education. The New Signature team collaborated closely with the Inside Higher Ed team to migrate the website from its eZ Publish platform to a Drupal 7 publishing platform.The revamped website provides visitors with breaking news and feature stories, provocative daily commentary, areas for comment on every article, practical career columns, and a powerful suite of tools to help higher education professionals get jobs and colleges identify and hire employees. The website has been designed to make it an online gathering place for all of the many constituents and diverse institutions that make up the rich web of higher education.
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October 28, 2011
New Signature Teams Up with Mobile Commons for New Website
By Ben ByrneToday, the new website for Mobile Commons
— designed and built by New Signature — launched. We worked closely with Mobile Commons to update their brand and develop a new site architecture that would make it easier for potential clients to quickly understand what the Mobile Commons platform is — and what the benefits of using it are.The new brand was developed with the goal of presenting Mobile Commons as friendly and inspiring. We adapted the existing logo to be more dynamic and paired it with an expanded color palette (the blue is new) and new fonts to achieve a more welcoming presentation.
But the look was only a small part of the challenge. More important was re-architecting the site to more quickly communicate to users what Mobile Commons offers. This posed a unique challenge, as the audience for the site consists both of those who are looking to find out what mobile marketing is and how it works, and those who are looking for information on the Mobile Commons platform and what separates it from the competition. We also sought to position Mobile Commons as a leader in mobile marketing strategy by highlighting ideas and successes.
The new website is built on WordPress, an open source Content Management System (CMS) on top of PHP and MySQL. Often used as a blog platform, WordPress has many powerful features — including a plugin architecture and theming system — that allow it to be extended far beyond just blogging (see Mobile Commons’s case studies page for an example).
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New Signature Launches Americans United Website
By Craig Zingerline
New Signature is proud to announce a new website launch for Americans United for Separation of Church and State. We worked with the team at Americans United from discovery through launch for this new website. The website explores the issues surrounding Church and State Separation and is positioned to be both informational and action oriented.Discovery
Through analysis and research conducted during our discovery phase (which we call Phase 0), we explored several key components of the old website that were in need of updating, and also brought fresh ideas and recommendations to the table to drive change for the website.
In addition to showing a large featured content rotator on the home page, we moved key content above the fold that we knew people were regularly seeking out. During the discovery process we leveraged both qualitative and quantitative information to help determine actual user behavior on the site, and re-worked the information architecture based on this information.
Design
Working with the AU team, we outlined the goal for the site design. We wanted to create a new visual design for the website that conveyed an authoritative, current, dynamic feel, while at the same time evoking the organization’s deep history. We also wanted the design to evoke a connection to the grassroots foundation which is one of the core elements of their action-oriented mission.For this, we expanded on the existing color pallet that AU was using, but made sure to maintain the brand’s colors of red, white and blue.
Integration
The site was built using the open-source CMS Drupal, and incorporates many new modules developed to handle custom (and sometimes complex) features and functionality. We built out multiple Drupal content types, and tied in a very powerful faceted-search mechanism through Apache SolR.
To see a great example of SolR in action, check out this SolR search results page on the new site: http://www.au.org/search/site/separation
We built a very robust set of Donation management tools for the site, which include one-time and monthly giving options. This toolset allows the AU staff to create donation pages on the fly, including the ability to integrate custom “asks” for setting donation levels on the fly for repeat supporters. We built functionality that allows for posting payment through major credit cards as well as through PayPal.
We also integrated a custom SDK based map that starts at the country level, then allows for drill-down into individual state pages. These pages show local chapter information as well as legal and legislative information relevant to that state.If you have any Drupal needs, please contact us today to learn more about what we offer and how we can help.
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October 6, 2011
New Signature launches new Digital Learning Now website
By Craig Zingerline
New Signature is proud to announce a new website launch for Digital Learning Now!. We worked with the team at Digital Learning Now to plan, design and implement this new website for the organization. The website outlines their vision for the classroom of the future, incorporating Digital Learning and utilizing technology to better student engagement. It also showcases Digital Luminaries and other key players in the Digital Learning movement.This site was built using the open-source CMS WordPress, and incorporates New Signature’s own WP Easy Post Types plugin for custom content type integration on the site. It also leverages Apache SolR for a powerful website faceted search experience.
Digital Learning Now! is a national campaign to advance policies that will create a high quality digital learning environment to better prepare students with the knowledge and skills to succeed in college and careers.
Jeb Bush, former Governor of Florida 1999 – 2007, and Bob Wise, former Governor of West Virginia 2001 – 2005, serve as co-chairmen.
If you have any WordPress needs, please contact us today to learn more about what we offer and how we can help.
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September 12, 2011
Women for Women International Launches Fall Match Campaign
By New Signature
Women for Women International has launched the organization’s Fall Match campaign.New Signature worked with Women for Women International to produce this compelling fundraising campaign for fall 2011, whereby member donations will be matched by a generous group of supporters. Women for Women International works in helping women in war-torn countries rebuild their lives both emotionally and financially, through a 1 year program of rehabilitation. New Signature’s goal is to help them reach $400k in donations!
New Signature worked with Women for Women International to develop an online communications strategy for the fall matching program. From there the New Signature team contributed and provided leadership in the areas content development, social media, graphic design, video production and website development.
You can watch the video that New Signature created for the campaign below.
