AlterNet

AlterNet is a progressive online news magazine featuring original content as well as syndicated content from various partnered news organizations that share its values. AlterNet is over ten years old and despite a recent visual redesign much of the technology the site was built on had become outdated.

AlterNet needed to migrate over 250,000 
pieces of legacy content including embedded media from various sources and blog posts managed on a separate WordPress interface. They also needed to easily generate newsletters based on site content. And they required a user-friendly, integrated online means of tracking payments to freelancers. Additionally, as a high traffic website, fast loading were a must.

Using Drupal modules, we recreated the user experience that AlterNet was already comfortable with and made improvements where requested.

REQUIREMENTS DELIVERED

• • Developed a dashboard to manage the payment of authors who are paid on a per story basis.
  • Integrated their WordPress blog with the rest of the site in Drupal
  • Installed Workbench content moderation system, building automated emailnotifications to editors when new draft content is submitted
  • Improved Search Engine Optimization
  • Built a newsletter tool that generates custom HTML newsletter editions listing articles that editors can add, remove or reorder. The tool enables editors to create new newsletter lists on demand.
  • Preserved Disqus comments from former site
  • Created homepage carousel
  • Enabled content creators to easily embed photos and videos through a pop-up media browser
  • Wrote code to allow content creators to embed slideshows into articles
    Installed Open Calais to automatically generate optimal tags for content as it is posted
  • Added a live character count to the text editor