Work that makes a difference: relaunching World Pulse

Earlier this year, the Four Kitchens team launched the brand new WorldPulse.com and we have been extremely proud of the reception of the new site. As a company, we strive to work on projects that do good in the world. Our mission is to change the world by setting knowledge free, and as a result, we seek to work on projects that further our mission. The strong alignment between Four Kitchens and World Pulse has made this project truly special.

By this point, you may be wondering exactly who World Pulse is, and why we are proud to call them a partner. World Pulse is a powerful online community of women and allies worldwide who speak out and build solutions to today’s biggest challenges. The organization’s mission is to accelerate the global changes women seek by using digital communication to unite and amplify women’s voices, solutions and impact worldwide.

In other words, World Pulse increases the global voice and leadership of women everywhere. World Pulse connects women who live in marginalized communities with a network where they can find support. A place where women can share their story among a supportive community, and advance their skills to lead change in their communities.

The redesign of World Pulse has been one of our largest, most ambitious projects to date. Some stats from the project can be found below:

Project highlights:

• Created a redesign that is intuitive for all levels of computer experience
• Mobile-friendly, responsive design
• Updated social media and networking experience
• Simplified navigation
• Migrated 20,000+ users
• Built a robust group system on Organic Groups
• Created many community tools for sharing information
• Ensured privacy and security were paramount, giving users simple ways of controlling who sees their content
• Laid out a large social website for users to learn, connect, and grow
• Created improved tools for the World Pulse staff to be able to manage their content
• The site is built with multilingual support in mind. The site is currently available in French, with the possibility for future translations.

What are some cool things we built with Drupal?

• Improved existing administrative interfaces to quickly and easily moderate user contributed content and comments.
• Created a robust way to embed elements both visually and on the back-end giving editors the ability to make content both attractive and data rich.
• A modular and reusable design and code approach that pairs panels best practices with highly flexible traditional Drupal templating.
• An intuitive “Call to Action” management system that ties together organizational initiatives with distributed user-generated content for comprehensive reporting and administration of World Pulse initiatives.
• A content migration paired with a complete refactor of the content model. A typical Drupal migration brings existing field data in Drupal 6 into its improved Drupal 7 counterpart. However, in this case, not only was content migrated to improved Drupal 7 structures, but into an entirely new and improved content model. This new model simplified and refined the overall approach by combining content types for efficiency and ease of use and connecting data entities in new and novel ways. Through this approach migrated data and users were provided full access to the enhanced capabilities and functionality of the new site.

Shortly after launch, the brand new WorldPulse.com received an AVA Digital Award for digital excellence. Not only are we thrilled to have launched such an amazing website, but we are humbled by the already overwhelmingly positive reception by the community.

The Four Kitchens team has been truly lucky in working with World Pulse on the launch of such a bold digital vision. Thank you World Pulse! And thank you, Four Kitchens Web Chefs, for your diligent work on this project.

Technologies used:

• Drupal 7
• HTML5
• CSS3
• Sass
• Grunt
• Grunticons
• Pantheon

Team members

Four Kitchens:

• Suzy Bates, Project Manager
• Caris Hurd, User Experience Designer
• Ian Carrico, Lead Engineer
• David Diers, Engineer
• Taylor Smith, Designer

World Pulse:

• Kathy Grantz
• Ankur Naik