Northland Pioneer - Drupal and Image X Media Experience

Northland Pioneer College's Experience with Drupal and ImageX Media
Northland Pioneer College is a regionally accredited, publicly supported community college serving several diverse areas in Navajo County, Arizona. They are based in Holbrook, but have 4 campuses and 6 centers.

NPC did not have a dedicated webmaster or skilled team to maintain a growing internet presence. They had looked at a few commercial systems as well as Drupal, in search of something robust and scalable. In the end, NPC approached ImageX Media looking for a solution.

ImageX delivered the complete package for them, from consulting, design, building and integration. NPC has a 1-1/2 year working relationship with ImageX. The communications director, Ann Hess, said she liked that Drupal was free, but was not completely sold on Drupal. After having worked with it, she is extremely happy with it, and it has served them well.

ImageX created workflow automation for them so that many repetitive tasks that were being done by administrative staff can now be reduced. As a smaller college, maybe 3500 students, they don't have large departments or lots of people to help edit the pages, so the workflow process helps things move along, and she can give access to different departments, so only they can manage their own areas. They are apparently not using Multisite. They have just one website, one server, etc.

As Ann described it, ImageX used Drupal to create a moderation system to edit pages relevant to what each area does. In other words, there are access restrictions per department or division, so they can't administer other areas of the website. I'm not certain how they implemented this.

A couple possible ways would be Organic Groups (a heavy solution?), or more likely Taxonomy Access module. However, Ann seemed to indicate it was a custom solution programmed by ImageX, using Drupal. It would be more appropriate to actually ask ImageX directly how they approached this administrative separation.

ImageX was on budget, and they built NPC's site from the ground up; a complete rebuild. Their site was in need of that, because the old site was a mess. Most of their NPC's collaboration with ImageX was done through telephone calls and Base Camp. ImageX made a visit a year into the project.

The backend is run through the I.T. department, but Ann's office, the office of communications, manages the website, and Ann used Jing to create screencast tutorials for training staff on how to administer the website.

They are just now beginning to set up the Program, Department and Division pages, and she will work with the departments to provide some access control for managing content, as needed.

Sounds like NPC is quite happy with what they have, and their site looks great.

Ann Hess, Director of Marketing and Public Relations, can be reached by phone at 928-536-6257, and is located at the Silver Creek Campus in Snowflake, Arizona.

posted by Phil