National Consumers League

The Situation: Lamson Media wanted to provide their client, National Consumers League, with an easy-to-use, robust content management system (CMS) that would provide better organization of their Web site content. They had created the design and information architecture, but needed to partner with a company to implement the design and install and configure the CMS.

The Problem: National Consumers League's (NCL) original Web site had an extensive amount of content. The Web site was developed in HTML, which meant that only a few staff members were able to update it. Also, the design of the site no longer fit with NCL's brand.

Our Solution: Joomla! allowed Lamson Media and National Consumers League to apply their new design on top of a flexible, user-friendly system. We converted Lamson Media's design source files into a custom Joomla! theme. Approximately 150 articles were selected from the original Web site to be converted into the Joomla! format. We converted each article into Joomla! format so that bullets, numbered lists, tables, and other formatting were preserved while fitting into the new design. Each article was placed in an appropriate category and section. We also setup the main content areas so that related articles appear in the sidebar based on the keywords entered by the administrative user. The National Consumers League blog and newsletter were integrated into the site. NCL staff can add a timely photo or YouTube video to the home page of the site to fit with their campaigns. Since we anticipated having to stretch some of Joomla's traditional features, we partnered with our team members at Nimbus Blue to complete some design and functional customizations.

The Result: National Consumers League has received many unsolicited compliments on the site from their visitors. The staff is able to regularly change the prominent home page photos, latest news, articles, video, and polls to fit with their timely and newsworthy topics. As they continue to explore the site, they are finding new ways to use it to better serve their audience.