This rebuild project was timed to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the journal. Although the printed version has had an online presence for nearly 10 years now, this new Drupal site is the boldest departure DIP(Development In Practice) has yet made from its printed form. The content is still available in its conventional volume/issue listing. But the careful keyword indexing on all journal abstracts, means that you can now sort abstracts into topic and regional lists. There is a guided search to help readers narrow their search results, and every journal article is complemented by a list of other similar content from other issues. The site retains its full multi-lingual functionality, and there are new spaces for web-only content including a blog and bookshelf area for reading lists.
We partnered with "Wave":http://www.wave.coop for the planning and graphic design elements of the project. Their final design makes imaginative use of Oxfam photography together with a tool that loads a new picture with each page view. Their design is based on clean, well structured xhtml code in a non-table based layout and using cascading style sheets (CSS) for all the presentational information. This improves the site’s chances in search engine content rankings and also makes pages quicker to download, much more accessible to all users and easier to update.