Through Continual Development, we implemented a new flexible, modular component-based CMS. This provides more control for the content managers at Arts Council.

Drupal’s modular content management system utilises paragraphs that allow editors to create text, input images, embed videos and more. The component-based design removes barriers to entry for contributing to the website. It also removes the need for coding knowledge when editing content on web pages, and reduces dependency upon developers, allowing clients to keep publishing in-house.

With Drupal’s native support for capturing content in a structured manner through Content Types, we incorporated fields tailored to suit specific needs. We created Content Types for the new Landing Page and Homepage, with the later addition of a Blog Landing Page.

These provided the skeleton for a basic page, including elements like: title, introduction and URL. Beyond that, we provided the ability to assemble pages from a set of available component styles. With these templates, content editors can ‘build’ compelling and interesting pages, whilst maintaining consistent brand integrity.

The components we created were:

• Home Page Gallery
• Showcase
• Double spotlight
• Featured content
• Full Text
• Header
• Navigation Spotlights
• Navigation Spotlights List
• Quick links
• Slides
• Spotlight element

Each component type can be added to a page any number of times, in any order. Additional components can be developed in the future as the organisation's content requirements adapt and change. These guides help content editors to publish in-house, while complying with accessibility and usability standards almost subconsciously.

We take a user-centric approach to all of our projects. To create a navigation structure that delights users, it must be built with them in mind. Therefore, in late 2017, we asked almost 100 everyday stakeholders of Arts Council to take part in creating the navigation. We used Card Sorting and Tree Tests to find out what users expected from the navigation and applied their opinions to best practices, ultimately creating the best navigation for everyone.

Individuals were asked to journey through the existing navigation in order to reach specific pieces of information; this is called Tree Testing. We investigated which areas they clicked on the most, how successful they were at finding the information, and how often they had to backtrack to find the information.

Card Sorting was then used to give insight into how users structure information in their own mental models. Users were asked to sort cards containing the topics on Art Council's navigation, to discover what areas they associated with each other. As a result, we were able to discover which topics were most often associated with other groups and which topics were considered too similar. This also provided insight to review the names of topics where their purpose was often misconstrued.

In addition to providing the premise of the global site navigation, these activities also presented the basis for the on-page navigation.

We implemented three forms of on-page navigation, to function as a secondary aid to the global navigation. On each page, content managers can set the following criteria, to help users get the most out of their visit:

• the breadcrumbs of the page

• the content spotlights

• the footer carousel

Mid-year, Arts Council release the successful funding grants for the next period causing a potential influx of traffic. We implemented a scalable, cloud-based hosting solution to provide Arts Council with extra support during these times of peak traffic. The solution will scale up virtual instances during peak trading periods and scale them down again automatically, with zero downtime.