Sector(s)
Team Members
Soldiers from the Sky preserves and shares the largely forgotten stories of Allied airborne forces based in South Kesteven before D-Day and Operation Market Garden. Big Blue Door worked with South Kesteven District Council and the project’s heritage team to create its digital identity and website from the ground up.
The work covered discovery, brand development, Figma design and prototyping, Drupal implementation, CMS training, hosting and support. Beginning in November 2024, the website delivery progressed through design, development and content preparation during 2025. Built initially in Drupal 10, the site uses structured stories, places and trails to connect historical research with opportunities to explore the area today. Big Blue Door subsequently upgraded it to Drupal 11 in July 2026.
Business case and background
South Kesteven’s airfields, villages and historic buildings played an important role in the lives of British, American and Polish airborne troops during the Second World War. The Soldiers from the Sky project sought to preserve these connections and make them accessible to a wider audience before more of this history passed from living memory.
Led by South Kesteven District Council and supported by The National Lottery Heritage Fund, the wider programme combined historical research, interpretation, learning and opportunities to visit significant locations. The website needed to give this work an enduring digital home, serving historians, schools, residents, visitors and families interested in the people who had served.
This was a new website with no existing brand or content platform to build upon. Big Blue Door needed to establish a distinctive identity and organise varied historical material into clear journeys. The site also had a practical visitor role: connecting stories with airfields, former billets, accommodation and heritage trails. Long-term hosting and maintenance were part of the brief, helping sustain access beyond the funded project’s completion.
About the project
Goals and requirements
The project set out to make airborne heritage engaging and discoverable while treating its subject with care. The website needed to bring together personal accounts, historical context, places and trails, helping readers move from learning about the past to exploring the locations connected with it.
The audiences ranged from researchers and military-history enthusiasts to school groups and casual visitors. A responsive experience and WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility requirements informed the brief. International access was also a consideration, including translation support for Polish readers.
For the small editorial team, the platform needed to support ongoing content creation and organisation. Requirements included rich media, flexible page layouts, search, categorisation and practical trail information, with training to help the team manage the site.
Discovery brand and design
Big Blue Door began with discovery involving the council and heritage stakeholders, including workshops, interviews and benchmarking against other heritage and memorial websites. As a new project without an established identity, Soldiers from the Sky required brand development as well as website design.
Big Blue Door created a logo and visual identity intended to work across digital and print. Archive imagery, clear typography and heritage tones helped give the project its own character. The design needed to respect the history while making the content approachable to people encountering it for the first time.
Wireframes and interactive Figma prototypes allowed the team to review navigation, layouts and journeys before implementation. A shared design system provided the foundation for translating the identity into a responsive Drupal theme.
Structured heritage publishing
The Drupal build organised the collection around stories, places and trails. Taxonomy provided categories for countries, narrative types and trail characteristics, while reusable components supported different combinations of text and media.
CMS training in May 2025 made this structure practical for editors. The team worked through examples of each content type and how to categorise and connect the material. Creating trails, adding related places and then linking stories to those places gave the publishing process a clear sequence.
This approach helps the website serve both research and visitor needs. Someone interested in a personal story can discover its geographical context, while someone planning a visit can explore the history associated with a location or route. Educational content provides another route into the material.
Delivery and milestones
The project used regular review meetings, shared prototypes and iterative development to coordinate brand, functionality and content. Big Blue Door worked closely with the council and heritage team as the material took shape, using feedback to refine the working website.
Key milestones included the kickoff on 8 November 2024, completion of the design system and initial CMS training by May 2025, and content preparation and launch work through the summer. Early September records document final public-access preparations and positive feedback from stakeholders and initial users.
Refinement continued after launch, including work on media presentation, tagging and content discovery. Translation support is provided through Google Translate. Big Blue Door upgraded the live site to Drupal 11 on 1 July 2026 as part of ongoing maintenance.
Outcome and ongoing value
Soldiers from the Sky now has a distinctive brand and a public digital resource bringing dispersed heritage material into one organised website. It combines remembrance and education with practical routes into South Kesteven’s places and trails.
For the editorial team, Drupal provides reusable structures for adding and developing the collection. For visitors, the site offers multiple ways to explore the same history, through people, places, countries and activities. Its scope extends beyond an individual commemorative event, supporting continued access to the project’s work.
Big Blue Door provides AWS hosting, support and maintenance to sustain the service. The website’s progression from Drupal 10 to Drupal 11 illustrates that ongoing commitment, keeping the technical foundation moving forward while preserving the project’s historical content and identity.
Why Drupal was chosen
Drupal suited a project whose value depended on the relationships between its content. A historical account could relate to a country, a military unit or a particular place; that place could form part of a visitor trail. The platform needed to make these connections manageable for editors and useful to readers.
Big Blue Door implemented distinct Story, Place and Trail content types, supported by taxonomy and reusable page components. Stories could be categorised by country and narrative type, places by their characteristics, and trails by activity or audience. This gave the project a consistent structure for expanding its content without treating every new page as a separate design exercise.
Drupal also supported the variety of material required for heritage storytelling. Editors could combine text, images, galleries and embedded media within the agreed visual framework. Dedicated fields, including trail length, helped present practical visitor information consistently alongside historical material.
The choice also built on Big Blue Door’s existing Drupal relationship with South Kesteven District Council. Drupal’s flexibility allowed a bespoke identity for Soldiers from the Sky, while the agency’s experience supported implementation, training and ongoing maintenance. Its open-source model avoided a CMS licence fee and provided a foundation for future development.
The subsequent upgrade from Drupal 10 to Drupal 11 demonstrates the value of planning for an actively maintained service beyond the initial launch.
Technical Specifications
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