{"id":86,"date":"2012-07-10T15:00:27","date_gmt":"2012-07-10T13:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wprealm.com\/?p=86"},"modified":"2019-01-03T18:54:33","modified_gmt":"2019-01-03T17:54:33","slug":"wordpress-in-action-cgiar-ngo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wprealm.local\/wordpress-in-action-cgiar-ngo\/","title":{"rendered":"WordPress In-Action: CGIAR NGO"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Project Website:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cgiar.org\/\">CGIAR<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What is the website for?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>The website is designed to act as both the main site for the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cgiar.org\/\">CGIAR NGO<\/a>, and as a hub for the huge range of content made available by all the consortium members.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Brief:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>The brief was, in effect, this list:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol><li>Web design based on the new branding guidelines<\/li><li>Designs for page layouts, style elements, typography, graphical elements<\/li><li>Unify and clearly present the information generated by the various Centres and CRPs<\/li><li>Create a central entry point for visitors to find the main governing bodies of CGIAR<\/li><li>Shift the emphasis from \u2018the institution\u2019 to \u2018content and research\u2019<\/li><li>Increase the unity of the Centres, CRPs, Fund and Consortium Office through consistent design and branding<\/li><li>Communicate clearly what CGIAR is and what it does<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p>There was, of course, a lot more to it than that and in the meetings that followed we realised that a <strong>good responsive design was a must<\/strong> &#8211; even if it can be a massive challenge on a complex site. We also knew that <strong>widgets had to work flexible<\/strong> &#8211; if a widget space was small, the widget should respond to that &#8211; responsive within responsive, if you see what I mean. That means the chances of a user putting a widget somewhere and messing up a page is pretty slim, so long as it&#8217;s one of our widgets, that is &#8211; some plugins have their own ideas!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Restrictions:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Restrictions were largely budget related. This wasn&#8217;t an infinite pot, even though the requirements were challenging. Time was ultra-critical. The primary elements had to be ready for the content team to get to work in time to be ready for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.uncsd2012.org\/\">Rio+20<\/a> that is running as I type this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Software:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Well, <a href=\"http:\/\/wordpress.org\/\">WordPress<\/a>, of course!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The rest of the stack is conventional enough <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/LAMP_(software_bundle)\">LAMP<\/a>, but that&#8217;s the client&#8217;s area in this project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We have our own suite of WP plugins that we use, but we recommend <a href=\"http:\/\/wordpress.org\/extend\/plugins\/w3-total-cache\/\">W3 Total Cache<\/a> for performance and CDN management, and <a href=\"http:\/\/wordpress.org\/extend\/plugins\/wordpress-seo\/\">WordPress SEO<\/a> by Joost de Valk for SEO<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image size-large wp-image-155\"><figure class=\"aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/wprealm.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/projectsshot\/1862812595.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-155\"\/><figcaption>Interconnect\/IT&#8217;s Microsoft Project for CGIAR<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>On our laptop machines we use <a href=\"http:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/project\/en-us\/project-management.aspx\">MS Project<\/a> for project management (how quaint!), <a href=\"http:\/\/www.adobe.com\/products\/fireworks.html\">Fireworks CS4<\/a> for mockups and early designs, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/intl\/en\/chrome\/browser\/\">Chrome<\/a> for design in the browser which is quite important with responsive websites. We use <a href=\"http:\/\/www.activestate.com\/komodo-edit\">Komodo Edit<\/a> for code editing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Who was on your team?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ul><li><a href=\"http:\/\/interconnectit.com\/author\/david-coveney\/\"><figure><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright size-large wp-image-158\" title=\"dave-james-rob\" src=\"https:\/\/wprealm.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/dave-james-rob\/430032585.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"360\" height=\"180\"><\/figure>David Coveney<\/a> for project management.<\/li><li><a href=\"http:\/\/interconnectit.com\/author\/rob\/\">Robert O&#8217;Rourke<\/a> for design and development.<\/li><li><a href=\"http:\/\/interconnectit.com\/author\/james-whitehead\/\">James Whitehead<\/a> for back-end development and plugins.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>But <a href=\"http:\/\/interconnectit.com\/about\/\">everyone in the company<\/a>, even past members, has some effect because we&#8217;re all in this together, so a mention to Laurie, Barrie and Peter who taught us about tuning Apache for WP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Workflow:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>From a development perspective we&#8217;re all in one office, which helps. Each morning we have a team meeting where we catch up on the previous day&#8217;s events, what we&#8217;re doing today, and what blocks we have &#8211; others then help with blocks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Code goes through the repository and can get <strong>peer-reviewed<\/strong> and for this project we tried out a degree of pair-programming that worked well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Plugins:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Most of the plugins are our own: Events, Templates, Maps etc. We&#8217;re likely to start releasing some of these soon &#8211; we&#8217;ve kept out of the product marketplace for some time and sat on our IP because we know we did it wrong with Spectacu.la!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I don&#8217;t want to go into too much detail on the open source plugins used due to disclosure requirements, but the one worth noting is <a href=\"http:\/\/wordpress.org\/extend\/plugins\/w3-total-cache\/\">W3 Total Cache<\/a> for excellent performance and CDN management. We also use <a href=\"https:\/\/wprealm.com\/recommends\/gravityforms\/\">Gravity Forms<\/a> on most sites as it&#8217;s such a friendly end-user tool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Custom Code:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Lots and lots and lots of custom code was used. We tend to take on bigger projects as a rule, and that shows through on projects like this. The theme itself is a chunky 1.36MB and there aren&#8217;t many graphics in it! There&#8217;s a fair few includes, of course, but it&#8217;s still something of a beast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Problems:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Nothing too bad. The biggest problem was <strong>getting a handle on the real cost of building a project this complex<\/strong>. Because we tend to push the boundaries of what can be done WP wise, things often add up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What did you learn?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Using <a href=\"http:\/\/lessframework.com\/\">Less<\/a> was big progress, and we&#8217;ve released WP-Less on Github to help others use it in WP. It has its strengths and a few weaknesses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The biggest thing we learned was how to work with a multinational team &#8211; we made heavy use of Skype for meetings, and only had to fly out twice to Italy. We also learned that<strong> it&#8217;s important for fixed cost projects that you stick firmly to your process<\/strong>. We had some runaway costs that we had to bear because we allowed an agile approach into a non-agile project with fixed outcomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Resources:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Read <a href=\"http:\/\/www.abookapart.com\/products\/design-is-a-job\/\">Design is a Job<\/a> by Mike Monteiro &#8211; it&#8217;ll make your life better when handling large and complex clients.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Project Website: CGIAR What is the website for? The website is designed to act as both the main site for the CGIAR NGO, and as a hub for the huge range of content made available by all the consortium members. The Brief: The brief was, in effect, this list: Web design based on the new [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":157,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[48],"people":[],"company":[],"events":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v21.4 (Yoast SEO v21.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>WordPress In-Action: CGIAR NGO - WP Realm<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/wprealm.com\/wordpress-in-action-cgiar-ngo\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"WordPress In-Action: CGIAR NGO\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Project Website: CGIAR What is the website for? 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