Illustrated map of local community venues, in the style of a doodle drawing

LocalGov Microsites

The LocalGov Microsite platform gives councils unprecedented control of their digital presence. From a single instance, they can create multiple unique websites that are easily updated and maintained.

We were the lead development partner on the project, working alongside local councils and Annertech to deliver a sector-leading solution to a longstanding issue for local government teams.

Our team was proud to lead the research, design, development and user testing for Microsites throughout 2022. Council teams told us what they needed, and we delivered a product that met their users' needs, creating the most valuable product possible for them. 
 
The Microsites platform is an additional LocalGov Drupal product that compliments our work on the LocalGov Drupal CMS.

 

https://localgovdrupal.org/microsites-platform

    About LocalGov Drupal

    LocalGov Drupal is an open-source content management system and collaborative project. It’s based on the Drupal framework and designed for local government.

    Over 30 councils are already using the platform, with many more due to go live over the coming months.

    It’s a co-operatively run asset and community that delivers a better digital experience for citizens, improves service outcomes, and saves money.

    LocalGov Drupal was developed to empower local governments to build and maintain websites efficiently and effectively.

    It is built and maintained by a community of developers, content designers and digital leaders from local councils across the UK, including ourselves.

    Discover more about our role in building the LocalGov Drupal CMS and helping establish the project as an exemplar of local government collaboration.

    The problem we set out to solve

    Local councils often need to support many websites for their teams across departments and services. Despite sharing much functionality, each site is created from scratch.

    As many sites are outside the central team's oversight, they quickly become outdated and stale.

    Councils spend considerable money, time and energy ensuring these sites are secure, up-to-date, accessible and valuable.

    The solution

    The Microsite platform is a stand-alone microsite system, allowing the administrator to easily create, maintain and destroy multiple distinct websites. While it was built for and with councils in mind, this has a broader appeal.

    It allows a single instance to run many individual sites, each with its own content team, content, files, and domain. A new site can be configured in moments.

    A microsite admin can customise the site's appearance through the UI, and a site editor can create content-rich pages, blogs, news articles, events and directories.

    And when the site has run its course, the microsite controller can take it offline with a click of a button.

    Screenshot of a multi column news page
    Screenshot of a 3 then 2 column layout
    Simple directory page

    Some of the outstanding features we built

    Centralised control

    The microsites have a single codebase and database, meaning there's only one site to host and maintain.

    A microsite controller oversees all active sites and can set up a new one immediately. You no longer need to keep track of all the sites you manage.

    Moreover, a microsite controller can see all the people with access across all the sites for more fine-grained control and security. 

    Separation of content and content team

    Each individual is given access on a per-microsite basis, meaning you can have wholly different teams editing each site if that’s what’s needed. However, where an individual does manage multiple microsites, their access details are the same.

    Content is unique to each microsite, including pages, media, taxonomy terms and menus. Further, a microsite admin can decide which types of content to enable on each microsite - one site could be a dedicated blog site, another with all the feature set. 

    Content editor experience

    We’ve built robust features for content editors to create stand-out content. Most types of content allow you to add multiple sections of one, two or three-column layouts. These can have different widths and background colours, allowing you to create engaging page layouts. 

    Simple directory page

    The interface for editing these sections has some great features, too - you can drag and drop content between sections, duplicate content items or whole sections.

    We have a great suite of content items - videos, images, tables, accordions, promo blocks and embedded content. These can easily be extended to allow for more options.

    Site design

    Each site can be configured - through the user interface - to use a bespoke set of colours and typography. A microsite admin can set up the content they want to appear in the header and footer and the site’s colours and typography.

    The system is also set up to allow for a bespoke theme to be set on a site-by-site basis, so if additional tweaks are needed, this is easy to do. 

    Live Microsites

    Here are 6 microsites that launched recently using the Microsites platform:

    Our offer

    Whether you’d like assistance getting started, design or development, we are uniquely positioned to help you with microsites.

    We can host and maintain your microsites and develop bespoke extensions and themes.

    Microsites is a great way to get started with LocalGov Drupal before switching your corporate site to the LocalGov Drupal CMS.

    Using it allows you to join the LocalGov Drupal community without the risks involved with a full migration of your core content.

    Contact us to discuss your project.

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