Sector(s)

Project Team

Team members: 

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Organizations Involved

Salsa Digital worked with a federal agency to set up a new CivicTheme/GovCMS website. Another new website we’d recently created for the same client was cloned, rebranded and then new content and images uploaded. Using a combination of a clone and CivicTheme allowed for an extremely cost-effective and fast site build, while also delivering a visually appealing and user-tested website.

Describe the project (goals, requirements and outcome)
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The agency’s challenge

A large federal agency wanted a new website dedicated to a specific subset of its stakeholders. The agency was already using GovCMS for other sites, so wanted a new GovCMS Drupal 9 website.  Note: The agency can’t be named for security reasons.  

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The transformation — a GovCMS D9 website

Having recently built another new GovCMS Drupal 9 website for this client using CivicTheme, Salsa Digital recommended cloning that site as the fastest and easiest path for a new website. The client was keen to make the most of the site’s framework and CivicTheme and decided to move forward with the clone.

Once the new site was created Salsa Digital and the client:

  • Applied new/different brand colours 
  • Uploaded new, dedicated content
  • Uploaded new, dedicated images

The combination of cloning the site and using CivicTheme saved our client considerable time and costs. The site was built in 2 months and for under $20k. 

Accessibility

Our accessibility expert validated our client’s colour palette choices to ensure they met accessibility standards (WCAG 2.1). 

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The outcomes — a low-cost, visually appealing site

  • A visually appealing website built with user-tested and accessible components
  • A fast website build
  • An extremely cost-effective website build (under $20k)
  • The benefits of the whole-of-government platform GovCMS, including open source code (no licensing fees), access to the GovCMS community, and a highly resilient and secure platform
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Why Drupal was chosen

GovCMS was chosen as a mature, whole-of-government Drupal solution. Drupal was chosen as the preferred CMS for Australia’s Federal Government through the creation of the GovCMS platform, which was launched in 2015. GovCMS is designed to make it easier for government agencies to create modern, affordable, responsive websites. Importantly, GovCMS provides a whole-of-government platform to help consolidation across government departments. The fact that Drupal is open source means there are no expensive lock-in contracts, and GovCMS can build a Drupal/GovCMS community.

Technical Specifications

Drupal version:

Key modules/theme/distribution used:

Why these modules/theme/distribution were chosen
  • CivicTheme was chosen due to its flexible component-based design and ease of implementation.
  • GovCMS was chosen due to its reliable and secure platform for Australian government organisations.