WWF.ch guidebooks

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Non-profit
Nominee

Summary

Relaunching the WWF guides for fish and seafood, souvenirs, fruits and food labels and integrating it into the existing Drupal 8 platform.

Case description

WWF's mission is to stop the degradation of the planet's natural environment and to build a future in which humans live in harmony with nature.

To achieve this goal it is important to have an inspiring and convincing website that educates about environmental topics, shows all the various WWF projects and actions, tells success stories and informs about how people can help.

In 2019 a complete new section has been added to the website: The WWF guidebooks for fish and seafood, souvenirs, fruits and food-labels provide valuable information about what items should be consumed, bought or imported to Switzerland - designed by getunik and implemented by acolono GmbH. The WWF guides can be found on the website here: https://www.wwf.ch/de/nachhaltig-leben

Before the relaunch in February 2019, the content of the guidebook was fed from an already aging CMS (Fusion). After the launch of the new wwf.ch website the goal was to modernize the buying guides and to use Drupal 8 as content hub for the guidebook content.

In 2018, getunik AG (design) and acolono GmbH (technical conception and development) were commissioned with the implementation.

Case goals and results

*Project goals*
- Drupal 8 as content hub for the guidebook content
The guidebook content should be maintained and edited via a central backend. The website, native mobile applications, or other digital experiences should be able to connect and use the content, all while maintaining data integrity and security.
- Content import functionality
However, content should also be able to be imported automatically, as some of the data needs to be updated on a regular basis (for example for the fish guide).
- Improved usability and search
Extensive filtering and sorting should facilitate the search for individual products within the guidebooks.
- Multilingual
All content should be translatable into several languages ​​(German, French and Italian).
- Satisfy stakeholders
WWF Switzerland has many stakeholders with different needs. We had to find a way to cover all of them without losing sight of the essentials.

*Result*
At the beginning of 2019, the WWF guidebooks have been published.

The various guides are now optimized for mobile use and the content is also used in the WWF native mobile app. It educates in three languages ​​and promotes awareness for sustainability. The search is snappy and works well for all target groups.

Editors maintain the content in the Drupal 8 backend, leveraging up-to-date asset and user management.

In 2018 there has been a remarkable increase of important metrics after the website launch. With the addition of the WWF guidebooks numbers like website visitors and conversion rates have increased even more in 2019.

“It feels great to see the WWF being successful in pursuing its mission and that acolono GmbH and our favourite Open Source Software Drupal are contributing to it.” says Christian Ziegler, CEO of acolono GmbH.

The guidebooks can be found here:
- Fish- and seafood guide www.wwf.ch/de/fischratgeber
Ask which fish and seafood come from sustainable sources
- Fruit and vegetables guide www.wwf.ch/de/fruechte-und-gemueseratgeber
Find out which fruits and vegetables are currently in season.
- Food labeling guide www.wwf.ch/de/lebensmittel-label-ratgeber
Anyone who buys ecologically and socially usually looks to labels. The 31 major food labels were evaluated for sustainability.
- Souvenir guide www.wwf.ch/de/souvenir-ratgeber
Buying souvenirs? Get an overview of what is allowed and what is not in the souvenir guide.

Challenges

- Multilingual content
Creating multilingual websites is not a big challenge using Drupal 8. However, some special requirements like a fallback language for search results or rendering content in multiple languages to be indexed by search api needed to be resolved.
- Content structure
The fish guide, for example, has special ratings per fish and catch area. That's why we decided to define our own rating entities that can be assigned to a fish. Categories, scores and ratings were implemented using their own vocabulary.
- Templating system for guides specific headers and footers
So that guide specific headers and footers don’t need to be recreated for each subpage, a category-based template system has been created. Editors can assign a specific template to a content to fill headers and footers.
- Search adoptions
The search is leveraging the search API and the facets module. Splitting up one taxonomy into multiple facets was one of the challenges. Another were having a glossary search or a free search field with automated search suggestions (autocomplete). A lot of development effort was necessary for the implementation of all the special search filters.
- Importing and updating guide content
The WWF guides content needed to be imported from CSV files. For example, the ratings for the fish guide are updated regularly, thus having an easy importing process was one of the requirements. Using the migration API importers for all guide books have been created.

Community contributions

acolono GmbH believes in Open Source and actively contributes to the Drupal community since day one. We contribute not only code, but also try to promote Drupal in the Austrian region and to support the local community by organizing meetups or camps.

acolono GmbH is supporting member of the Austrian Drupal association and its founders Christian Ziegler and Nico Grienauer are in the association’s board and one of the driving forces of events like DrupalCamp Vienna, the Open Minds Awards or the DrupalCon Vienna Community Day.

While creating and maintaining the website it happens that we run into issues in existing modules or even Drupal Core. acolono GmbH is contributing back all fixes. Some project specific examples are the following issues on drupal.org:

- Facets - Hide default option for dropdown widget
https://www.drupal.org/project/facets/issues/3014027

- Facets - Dependent facets don't reset after conditions are not met anymore.
https://www.drupal.org/project/facets/issues/2908937

- SearchAPI: Issue with "programmatically rendered" items in multiple languages for indexing
https://www.drupal.org/project/search_api/issues/30359779

Why should this case win the splash awards?

The project is a great casestudy and shows how Drupal can be leveraged to create successfull digital experiences for well-known brands.
A beautiful and consistent design (done by getunik AG) that works for all target groups. Developed and executed following best practices and Drupal standards (by acolono GmbH) . It's a Drupal success story that needs to be told.