website design

Mapping Durham Civil Rights History with Drupal 8

posted on March 17, 2016

In 2015, Savas Labs engaged with Barbara Lau and the Pauli Murray Project at the Duke Human Rights Center to rebuild their faltering, and previously vibrant online map of historical locations and events associated with the legacy of Pauli Murray. The site had not been updated in a while, and due to automatic updates to the Google Maps API, had been rendered fairly unusable.

To reclaim the powerful community resource, Savas Labs decided to rebuild the map in a then beta version of Drupal 8 to leverage some of the advantages of the newer platform while incorporating a new design, transitioning to free and open source tools that removed the previous bounds of Google Maps integration, while learning at every turn.

Come to this session to learn more about local history, the Drupal platform, generally, Drupal 8 and designing in Drupal 8 more specifically, and modern web mapping tools.

Chris Russo
Savas Labs

Speaker Bio
Chris has been a professional web developer since 2007 and made his first website on geocities.com when he was 11. He was a big fan of and was deeply saddened when it was deprecated. For Savas Labs, Chris relishes in the success and growth of his clients and team, and writing in the third person. When Chris is not behind the computer, he’s often on a bicycle. He is the former board chair of nonprofit hospitality network WarmShowers.org, served on the board of his local bicycle advocacy organization Bike Durham for 3.5 years, founded a bicycle-powered food scraps recycling company called Tilthy Rich Compost, and rode his bicycle 6,000 miles across the U.S. in the summer of 2008.

Don’t Guess! What We Know About Website Users

posted on January 27, 2015

Making a website easy for your visitors to use is essential for a terrific website experience. Great content is often crippled by poor usability. Understanding usability principles can inform your design and content decisions to make websites more user friendly and successful. No more guessing how people use websites! Based on publicly available usability research, we’ll discuss what we know about users in terms of both big-picture concepts and nitty-gritty details. For example, how do users engage with photography on websites? We’ll also discuss items to keep in mind for visitors on mobile devices.

We will look at website examples to see common problems that non-profits make that cause their websites to be user-UNfriendly. We’ll also talk about potential solutions. You’ll walk out with practical tips that you can immediately use to better your website. Resources will be suggested for further learning.

Speaker: Melissa Eggleston

Organization: http://melissaegg.com

Speaker Bio: As a content strategist with a UX focus, Melissa Eggleston aims to help organizations create memorable website experiences so they can connect to their “tribe.” In 1996, she wrote her first online stories about soccer and violated all the rules we now know about writing for the web. Now as a freelancer, she consults and creates content for all types of organizations – from dentists in California to an e-commerce design firm in New York to a religious non-profit in Kentucky. Previously she worked for Duke University and Bloomberg News. Melissa gained her multimedia skills and love of usability at UNC-Chapel Hill where she got her Master’s degree. When not working, you’ll likely find Melissa on her yoga mat or trying to convince her 3-year-old daughter that their cat Luna really doesn’t want another hug.

Session Tags: usability, user experience, content strategy, intermediate, beginner, website design

NCTech4Good, an affiliate of NTEN and TechSoup’s NetSquared, is the local resource for nonprofit technology information. Join the sharing and networking at monthly meetings on the third Wednesday of the month, 6:30-8:30 p.m. usually at UNC-TV, and our annual conference, https://www.nct4g.org/. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter @nctech4good, and with the hashtag #nct4g.