Albion District Library Moves to WordPress

Overview

In 2012 the staff at Albion District Library, Albion, MI decided to make the move from Joomla 1.5 to WordPress 3.5.

There were two main reasons they decided to make this move.

1. The required migration from Joomla 1.5 to the new 2.5 version would have required a new template and other updates to  add-ons and components.
2. The site administrators wanted a simpler system to manage.

Feature Requirements

• Rotator to advertise special events and services
• Easy to access audience menu link (Youth, Teen, Adult)
• Easy to find general library information (hours, contact information)
• Incorporate custom catalog search functionality in all pages
• Import about 38,000 Albion Community obituary records from a legacy system into a searchable WordPress solution.
• Mobile-friendly site

Solution

While Joomla is a feature-rich content management system that met their needs well, it was deemed to technically difficult by the site managers, who are librarians by profession, not web designers.

Working with ADL, ProWWW Design

• Completed a needs analysis.
• Collaborated with ADL on site organizational planning.
• Installed WordPress in a development environment.
• Provided training and documentation for ADL staff so they could get busy migrating Joomla content and creating new features, while ProWWW continued with the technical work..
• Configured and customized their new responsive (mobile-friendly)theme.
• Migrated 38,000 obituary database records into the WordPress site and configured a plugin to provide search and display features for visitors, and a admin interface for the database mangers.
• Incorporated custom library catalog search code into the template.
• Configured web-server side redirects from the former Joomla site URLs to their new WordPress counterparts.

Project Duration: 5 months