The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Negotiations Affairs Department (NAD) is an organization that was founded in 1994 to follow up on the implementation of the Interim Agreement signed between Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel. In June 2016 Vardot helped NAD to launch a new website that will help the organization with their international mission.
Background of the project
The NAD was looking to revamp their website, since the old one was built on an old custom-made PHP Content Management System, with usability challenges for content creators, a lack of responsive design for mobiles and hand-held devices, a lack of digital asset flexibility, lack of internationalization and translations capabilities, lack of proper search engine optimization of site’s content, and several other issues. There was also a need to recategorize the content on the new site to make it more logical and user-friendly. NAD was looking for better structure in a sense, and we’ve decided to choose Varbase - the Drupal distribution that has proven to be a user-friendly, powerful, and enterprise-level CMS that overcomes all the challenges NAD had in their old site, and adds, even more, features and standards for smooth and powerful editing experience.
See 6 recommendations on how to make Drupal editor-friendly for some tips we use to make Drupal more editor-friendly using Varbase.
Design & development
After the proper hosting plan was chosen, Vardot could start with actual design and development. We had to restructure all old pages of the site and their content. Our team divided up all the different types of content that NAD could have and categories for each. We’ve created content types and charts that allowed our client to reflect their data in an appealing way to the visitor, and several admin roles in order to give multiple users permissions to update the site on a daily basis. Organizing everything this way allows site-owners upload and manage content seamlessly.
One of the issues of the previous NAD’s site was that it had too much PDF documents that were not indexed. It was extremely difficult for site visitors not get lost in files, and it affected the general user-experience and search engine results. We helped our client to accommodate PDF content and made it possible for a search to index the PDF files content. Now users can easily find what they are looking for, and the organic traffic is growing every week.
Last, but not least - Vardot helped NAD to get to know their site visitors better. The site is offering two languages Arabic and English to give visitors from around the world the possibility to read the content easily and added a newsletter integration to allow NAD to keep in touch with interested people. We’ve also connected the new site with selected social media networks to allow users from different countries to quickly share things with others.
Hosting
First of all, Vardot took care of NAD hosting and made sure that the website is powerful and quick enough. We migrated the new website to Acquia servers which guarantees our client an extended productivity, reliability, and speed.
We also ensured the site is being constantly updated, and no breaches or attacks will happen in the future because of the weak protection.
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Services done
- Research & Consultation
- CMS Development
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Web Design Extension & Guideline
- Drupal Multilingual Development
- Automated Migration from Legacy CMS and Content Uploading
- Social & Multimedia Integration
- Hosting Infrastructure Setup
- Maintenance & On-going Support
- Security Assurance
- Newsletter Integration
Bottom line
Evaluation of the site performance and comments we received by our client a month after the site launch shows that NAD is becoming another successful Drupal project performed for a governmental organization. If you are also looking for a fully functional and reliable web solution, trust your website to the biggest Drupal agency in the Middle East. Should you have any development challenge you need help with, drop us an email.
