Who: The House of Mews in Memphis, TN
What: A brand, spanking new website built from scratch.
Why: The House of Mews proprieter often complained that it was too difficult to sort through the hundreds of emails generated from forms on the old website. It was also a pain for vounteers to update the adoption listings. To view a list of available cats, site users had to navigate away from the House of Mews site and onto petfinder.com Drupal 6 and Adobe Flex fixed these problems, and then some.
How:
Drupal 6 was used to convert the old HTML site to a CMS. Also, site visitors can now register on the site to submit rescue requests, and rather than having that info clog up the email inbox, it goes into a searchable list (thanks to Views and CCK).
A similar method is in place to accept volunteer applications, but since these are rare, email notifications are sent out whenever one is completed. This was done with the Rules module for Drupal 6.
The real-time cat browser on the homepage pulls in data from Petfinder.com and creates an easily navigable listing of adoptable cats. Volunteers who are used to uploading cat information to Petfinder don’t have to learn new software, and site visitors no longer have to leave the HoM site to view cats up for adoption. Win!
The cat browser was created with Adobe Flex 3. It was amazingly simple – in fact, it was the very first Flex/Actionscript app I’ve ever created. FYI – I’m currently converting this app to use the Cairngorm framework, and will be releasing the source code on this website some day.
