Advocating for Public Service in Counties Across America
From Drupal 7 to Drupal 10
Serving the County Governments that Serve Us
Purposeful Landing Pages
Robust Resource Library
Architected In-site Search
The National Association of Counties (NACo), founded in 1935, serves nearly 40,000 county elected officials and 3.6 million county employees, strengthening America’s counties.
NACo unites county officials to advocate county priorities in federal policymaking. They promote exemplary county policies and practices, nurture leadership skills and expand knowledge networks. Ultimately helping to optimize county and taxpayer resources with cost savings as they enrich the public’s understanding of county government.
NACo approached WDG with the need for a powerful and robust Drupal website that would provide an individualized website experience for its large membership and inform the broad public about its work and services.
Challenge
The Drupal 7 website positioned the latest county news, reports and resources, allows NACo to advertise and promote events while educating the public on the roles and responsibilities of county governments. With WDG, NACo would launch on Drupal 10, providing improved member benefit through logged in features. With WDG, they surfaced content priorities to evolve their information architecture to help audiences find value.
Solution
As content management systems age, content governance and innovation suffer. WDG worked to empower internal teams to create audience targeted content that was presented to end users through a variety of channels. WDG worked in tandem with the core project team to listen to internal stakeholders within the organization. Working with the Advocacy team for example, opened doors to elevate and extend the reach of their content strategy. This resulted in a build that was reflective of the goals of the association at large.
Results
The brand application of the association was refreshed within a flexible framework. The outcome of WDG’s efforts resulted in a streamlined member management process that integrated single-sign-on for usability. The logged in experience supports content bookmarking and behavior driven personalization. The content that wasn’t needed on the site was scaled down, resulting in a less cluttered website with a better hierarchy structure. The number of landing pages was reduced, further simplifying the user experience. The new website was launched on Drupal 10.
40,000
Number of County Elected Officials NACo Serves
3.6 million
Number of County Employees NACo Serves
Flexible Mobile Friendly Frameworks
Mobile responsive websites are crucial for organizations that prioritize usability and accessibility. These websites adjust their layout and design to fit different screen sizes, ensuring optimal viewing and interaction experience across a variety of devices, including smartphones, tablets, and desktop computers. This adaptability enhances user engagement and satisfaction.
The Advocacy Hub
Digital Resources for Informed Action
The Advocacy Hub page provides resources and tools for counties to get involved and make a difference. The section offers detailed analysis with customizable tools to support outreach on federal policy issues. It reviews top federal policy advocacy items with an eye towards counties and the intergovernmental partnership. Ultimately the section empowers members with resources to share with federal partners and members of Congress that highlight how counties impact nearly every American every day.
Mission Driven Websites
National Association of Counties
Counties play an instrumental role in the overall public administration and governance of federal, state and local policies, programs and services.
Drupal 7 End of Life
Modern Drupal CMS Architecture
Migrating from Drupal 7 to Drupal 10 provided NACo with improved performance from its Symfony 5 framework resulting in faster page delivery. Drupal 10 automatically applies security updates to core, contributed modules, and themes. Node centric control and purposeful editor capabilities resulted in a Drupal 10 implementation with a component-based system that simplifies content entry and administration.
The new site works for major conferences as well as webinars. Features align with the type of event, scaling with need. Conferences are microsites with their own menu. Related resources are integrated within conference pages. The webinar-to-resource workflow supports repositioning the value of past recorded virtual events as on-demand video within the resource library.
Future plans include expanding MyNACo usage, exploring integration opportunities, and adding personalization functionality to offer targeted member content via Microsoft Dynamics integration. Admins will be able to promote NACo partners within MyNACo to target members with benefits discounts, add more components, and perform performance tuning.
