The Education For Justice project has an expansive membership-based website chock full of prepared resources related to Catholic Social Teaching for educators. The problem that they were having was that the site was not user-friendly and although they had great content, it was hard to organize it well in the restrictive and clunky system they were tied in to.
After building the back end and setting up the database structure to prepare the new site, I imported their content from the old server and transferred their membership database over to the new system. I set the site up to allow access to most of the content only to members and we integrated much of the member subscription and renewal process directly on the site. I set up a complex system of tags to allow content to be cross referenced by the type of content (e.g. Lesson plan) as well as by the issues that it deals with (e.g. Catholic Social Teaching principles).
I wrote some custom code snippets and used some modified icons based on the projec type to help organize and format the content to make the site more valuable to users who are searching for specific information or who simply want to surf through the various connections.
Here's what the 2007-2008 COC Annual Report had to say about the redesign:
Education for Justice marked 2007 with several significant signs of hope and progress. Perhaps the greatest accomplishment was the redesign and re-launch of the EFJ website. After six years of providing resources for educators, this highly acclaimed national resource needed upgrading in order to better meet the diverse needs of those promoting Catholic Social Teaching today.
EFJ subscribers responded enthusiastically to the new site by spreading the good news to their colleagues and friends, increasing membership by 36 percent since December of 2007 when the new site was launched. Feedback on the improved site has been remarkably positive. “Your site is an excellent way to keep up with social justice issues. I share a lot of information with my teachers and pastor. Thank you and God bless,” wrote Sr. Leonita Barron of the Sisters of the Incarnate Word. Paul Amrhein of Richmond, VA wrote, “What you do is the most important work in the Church. If we cannot get people to understand that, nothing else we do really matters.” Jeannie Colber of Catholic Relief Services called the EFJ website “beautiful, accessible and timely.”