IAALS
Working together since 2015
IAALS (the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System), a national legal research center at the University of Denver, studies how the legal system works in practice. We have built and rebuilt their site through several redesigns, most recently migrating it off Drupal 7, with:
- A Drupal 7 migration, the latest step in several design iterations over the years
- Apache Solr search across a research archive that has been accumulating for more than a decade
- Custom displays and relationships that group, filter and surface publications by program, type and topic
- A custom donation system built into the site rather than handed off to a hosted form
- Custom state-level maps showing the projects IAALS has completed in each state
- A dynamic editing experience so their team builds pages and layouts without a developer
About this project
The challenge
IAALS sits inside the University of Denver, where it was designated DU's first Research and Reform Institute, and its site runs within that wider university ecosystem. What it produces is research: reports, studies and recommendations, across several programs of work and accumulating over many years. That is a harder content problem than it first appears. Research output does not fit a single template, it builds up over time instead of being replaced, and the people who need a particular piece of it usually arrive looking for something specific, not to browse. A nonprofit also has to fund the work it publishes, so the same site has to ask for support as well as give the research away.
What we built
We have rebuilt the IAALS site through several design iterations and, most recently, a migration off Drupal 7. The content model is built around how research behaves: custom displays and relationships group, filter and surface publications by program, type and topic, so older material stays reachable as the archive grows instead of sinking out of view. Apache Solr search sits over that for people who already know what they are looking for. Donations run through a custom system built into the site, not a hosted form on somebody else's domain, and a set of custom state-level maps shows the projects IAALS has completed in each state, which turns a list of engagements into something a reader can see the reach of at a glance. Their communications team builds pages and layouts themselves through a dynamic editing experience, which is what keeps a small nonprofit staff from needing a developer for routine work.
The result
Since 2015 the site has been redesigned several times and moved off Drupal 7 without the research archive or the content model being thrown away and rebuilt each time, which is most of the reason a decade of publications is still coherent and findable. Their team runs the site day to day, and the work we do for them now is improvement rather than rescue.
Built with
- Drupal
- Drupal 7 migration
- Apache Solr search
- Custom donation system
- Custom state-level project maps
- Custom publication displays and relationships
- Dynamic page and layout building for editors
- Custom theme development
Rehab Creative is definitely the best web development agency I've ever worked with. They go above and beyond for me every time, and I can't recommend them highly enough. We've worked together for over a decade on many different website projects, from new sites, to redevelopments, to specialized tools, and they genuinely care about me as a client and their work.
Zachary Willis
Director of Communications