“The National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest) works to end the misuses and flaws of standardized testing and to ensure that evaluation of students, teachers and schools is fair, open, valid and educationally beneficial.”
Over the years, Fairtest.org had become the “go to” site for data and policy on these topics. Since No Child Left Behind became law, interest and material grew significantly. With their traditional, static web site framework, FairTest's single staffer could no longer keep up, with hundreds of pages of valuable research, advocacy resources and news increasingly difficult to organize and access.
In 2007, Database Designs began a web redesign process. With a limited budget, FairTest agreed to move the site into Drupal, the powerful Open Source content management system. We were confident that Drupal would simplify maintenance and provide tools to make it easy for visitors to find the information they were looking for. Minimal attention would be devoted to visual design. The only requirement was that the design be clean and uncluttered.
A top priority for FairTest was to optimize the display and maintenance of the most popular feature of the FairTest website: its up-to-date listing of four-year colleges that do not use the SAT I or ACT to admit substantial numbers of bachelor degree college applicants. With Drupal, we were able to create a listing of “test optional” colleges—now up to 775—that visitors could search by name, city or state. And the FairTest staffer could easily update the list with a simple interface within Drupal without any database experience.
To make it easier for visitors to find the information they were looking for among the extensive resources available on the site, we worked with the FairTest staff to redesign the main navigation menu. We then focused on implementing Drupal’s powerful “Taxonomy” feature that allows staff to “tag” all content by topic. Finally, we mapped out how best to support visitors in searching the Fairtest’s extensive newsletter archive.
We then trained the FairTest staffer to migrate selected content from the old site to Drupal, staging the process so that the new site could be launched in a timely way.
We are confident that the Drupal platform will provide a framework for continued growth, expansion of features, and a more visible web presence for the organization in the years ahead.
