Planning New Website

Steps for onboarding on Digital Commons platform.

Building a new website can be challenging – it’s hard to know where to start. With our experience building more than 70 state agency websites, Digital Solutions can advise and guide you in the most effective processes for your new website.

Our proven project process takes you through planning, building, finalization and launch.

Onboarding to Digital Commons platform from Discovery to Launch.

  • 1

    Discovery

    Digital Commons is a Drupal-based content management platform owned and maintained by the State of North Carolina with an accessible, secure, user and mobile-friendly interface. We help you understand our platform and determine together how a Digital Commons website can provide solutions for your agency. 

    The Digital Solutions team reviews your current websites, analytics, and technical requirements to create the initial scope. We work together with your agency team to help you build a new modern website on our enterprise-level platform. 

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    What problems will a new website solve for your agency? What do you want it to accomplish? What your site visitors' needs are? Digital Solutions will help you surface stakeholder expectations and key performance indicators of success.  

    A new website needs its champions! Start early in the process by properly staffing your Digital Commons website. 

  • 2

    Define

    A new website is a fresh start and a good time to get assumptions out in the open. Stakeholders need to align on what is most important to guide the vision for the new site, we help you surface stakeholder expectations through the Stakeholders Survey When you bring the right people to attend our Digital Solutions workshops, we help spread that message and change mindsets.

    Who uses your website, and what are they trying to accomplish there? Digital Solutions leads workshops and creates surveys for you to identify types of visitors and their top tasks on the website. See these SAMPLE surveys below:

  • 3

    Design

    Our content strategists help you communicate the right content structure to your users. We help you organize your future site information architecture in a clear and understandable way allowing users to find what they need with less effort. Having a site map is absolutely crucial before work begins. Just as important is that the key stakeholders sign off on it, so there are no surprises – and time-consuming re-work – later. 

    We train and support your team members through the building process, and advise you on the best approach to present information on your website with Digital Commons platform capabilities. These best practices ensure the website content is written clearly, formatted consistently, mobile-friendly, and accessible to people with disabilities.

    Information Architecture Example

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    We provide interactive online training on the Digital Commons platform for your team and offer a variety of online video guidance. 

    Detailed step by step guidance documentation is always available on this website under Help Topics section.

    Six accessible color palettes are available for Digital Commons websites. State agencies and organizations may select the most suitable palette from the following options:
    Examples:

    Digital Commons Portal theme logo requirements: 

    • Logo size have been increased to accommodate 250px x 75px.

    Digital Commons platform offers a range of pre-designed default views that are integrated into the platform's core and styled to offer the best possible user experience. 

    Our team is ready to collaborate with you to develop custom views tailored to your specific requirements, and we also offer comprehensive training to ensure you can make the most of these views. 

    Consider utilizing available default options:

    • /blog  (grid view of blogs)
    • /blog-entry-list   (listing view of blogs)
    • /events  (listing view of upcoming events)
    • /past-events  (listing view of past events)
    • /upcoming-events-page (upcoming events in a grid view)
    • /news/press-releases (listing view of press releases)

    Webforms provide online forms accessible to website visitors. Submission results and statistics are recorded and accessible to privileged users. We train and help you create webforms tailored for your needs from simple Feedback forms or more complex forms with pagination and conditional logic. 

  • 4

    Deploy

    After testing and agency approval, your site is officially live and available to the public. We help you set up proper Google Analytics tracking of your new site data. 

  • 5

    Support

    You can rely on our team's support for the life of your website. Join our Sprint Review sessions to learn more about platform updates, new features and bug fixes.

    Platform Updates Blog