New York web design

We’re super proud to introduce the new web home of the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding, a literally world-renowned nonprofit. Tanenbaum brings together people of different faiths by guiding schools, workplaces, and medical institutions and honoring peacemakers of wartorn regions.

The list of religious and political dignitaries*, corporations**, universities***, and charities**** who support Tanenbaum — via financial support, accolades, or contributions — is completely ridiculous. I offer you mere samples of each:

*: Billy Graham, Bill Clinton, Rudy Giuliani, Kofi Annan, Madeline Albright, Joe Lieberman
**: Walt Disney Company, Conde Nast, Verizon, Kraft, Prudential, Shell, Viacom
***: Oxford, Princeton, Harvard, George Mason, Fordham, Columbia
****: Carnegie Corporation, JP Morgan Chase Foundation, Merril Lynch & Co. Foundation

And many many more. Somewhere in there, there’s little old us.

Tanenbaum’s old site was static (AKA hard to update, inflexible, and hard to expand) and didn’t present the clearest picture of exactly what they do.

They wanted to distinguish their programs from each other in an obvious visual way, instead of having only one look for the entire site. Being able to update their own content at the drop of a hat was also on the shopping list.

Looking over their content management system options, they narrowed it down to Drupal, WordPress, Ruby on Rails, and Moveable Type.

Already leaning towards going open source, Tanenbaum was impressed by Drupal’s flexibility.

So (PRESTO) we created a custom Drupal build for Tanenbaum, as we’re known to do from time to time. We developed:

• a complete E-commerce solution allowing sales, donations, and gifts
• Google Maps and social media integration
• different sections for each program
• a promo ad management system
• forums
• a couple dozen distinct content types
• Views/CCK-based automagical content displays
• easy-to-create photo galleries
• and a roped-off section offering premium content for paying members.

Pulling over and restructuring all their content followed, plus some proofing along the way. Tanenbaum’s old blog was hosted at wordpress.com, so we brought that on over into the new Drupal site too, consolidating their web presence and brand into one much-improved location.

So YEP we’re happy Tanenbaum’s new Drupal site is live and firing, and now we’re on to the on on to the next one.

The Image Initiative, Inc. is a Syracuse, New York nonprofit dedicated to helping young women of color. They asked us to build an expressive website that puts them in charge of all their content and gives them plenty of room to grow.

The site features a custom Drupal build, an original theme with multiple highly distinct templates, and lots of Views/CCK work to ensure all their newest content goes where it’s supposed to go. We’re very proud of the finished product!

The American Museum of Natural History, one of the world’s five most-visited museums, has had us create a subsite for the Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival two years in a row. The sections needed to fit the website’s feel, but in a distinct fashion. We contributed custom PHP and themed up the site’s design, leaving breathing room for big, crisp, quick-loading images.

Armistead Booker, associate media designer at AMNH and this project’s point of contact, describes our coding contributions as a “completely overhauled backend to the site, which was a vast improvement from the festival site in previous years.” He also confirms that we were “on budget for this project … accommodating our demanding schedule and timing just as we requested.”

Be sure to click around the rest of the AMNH website so you can get a feel for how our contributions fit in.

Some AMNH fast facts:

• Founded in 1869
• Four million annual museum visitors
• 460,000 field-trip visitors annually
• 13 million annual website visitors
• 200 scientists on staff
• Over 90 publications per year
• International expeditions yielding 60,000+ new exhibit items annually

Much, much more on the museum here.

*

We need you to pay a visit to KatinaRaeStapleton.com, the new web home of Dr. Katina Rae Stapleton.

She’s a highly accomplished educator who’s taught at Duke, Georgetown, Syracuse, and St. Lawrence and currently works for the Department of Education. We designed and built her a lively WordPress site from scratch, giving her a place to combine her diverse interests and pursuits. Take a look, and follow her on Twitter @krsprof.

You know you’re up for some artsy NYC flavor. Check out our latest website development project at RevelinNewYork.com — video portraits of artists, underground punk legends, rabbis, foot models, Al Sharpton… We think it’s a fresh, personal look at the city’s cool and quirky people, all powered by our custom Drupal build.

Note: Some video portraits may or may not feature people in myriad stages of undress, depending on how artsy NYC is at the moment. Yes, Al Sharpton’s is work-safe.

(UPDATE 10/20/09: RevelIn has been featured at BoingBoing, the New York Post, Gothamist, and many others.)