Duke Cancer Institute

Migration Featuring Accessibility and Select Feature Enhancements

Duke Cancer Institute homepage

The Challenge 

Migrate dukecancerinstitute.org to modernize the platform and improve the editorial experience, search, and accessibility.

Our Approach

Beginning with a discovery phase, we performed an audit on the existing site to identify critical areas to improve and efficiently plan the migration process.

The Results 

A smart site complete with content-editor-friendly CMS featuring a new search feature that allows relevant content to load faster.

Photo by David Travis on Unsplash

Discovery

At the onset of the project, we began with a discovery phase, collaborating with Duke Cancer InstituteI to audit their existing Drupal 7 site experience in order to plan the migration. Along the way, we were able to identify critical areas of improvement during the Drupal 8 upgrade. Targeted improvements focused on improving search functionality, optimizing the content-editor experience, and enhancing accessibility throughout the site.

Search improvements

Effective search means better usability and happier site visitors. While migrating dukecancerinstitute.org from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8 we were able to implement a new search function that quickly loads more content that is specifically relevant to a user’s query.

It’s critical for search functionality to be fast and smart as well as optimized for all screen sizes and devices. Better keyword search and more organized content allows site visitors to quickly and efficiently find exactly what they’re looking for. We introduced an enhancement to populate results from most relevant to least relevant while increasing performance through ensuring the search index is updated once per hour.

 

Duke Cancer Institute homepage on different screen sizes

Editorial Enhancements

The Duke Cancer Institute exists to discover and develop the world’s best cancer care through first-class patient care, top-tier talent and game-changing research. This means that their site needed to be as collaborative, innovative, and flexible as they are in order to keep up with the fast-paced nature of their organization. We implemented a custom content editor leveraging four States (Draft, In Review, Published, and Archived) to streamline workflow for DCI’s content team . We designed this functionality so that content can be transitioned from "Draft" to "In Review," "In Review" to "Published," "Published" to "Archive," as well as in the other direction. User Roles allow users to have specific permissions to add and edit content within the workflow in order to optimize content management.

 


 

A modern platform is important

A modern platform improves your site for both your users and content editors.