Unifying Cancer Australia’s websites through a GovCMS consolidation
The Cancer Australia corporate site is the result of a collaboration between PaperMoose and PreviousNext. It consolidates Cancer Australia’s various websites into a unified, modern platform. The result is a GovCMS PaaS platform with significant Drupal integrations. This provides patients and health professionals with a single trusted avenue to information, supporting the Australian Government’s strategic focus on cancer control and care.
- Client
- Cancer Australia
- Industry
- Government
- Service types
- Drupal and Web Development
Highlights
- GovCMS PaaS development flow
- Layout Builder library of block types
- Design System using Storybook, with Twig and React components
- Drupal theming with Pinto
- Automated and manual content migration
- OpenSearch API
Deliverables
- A unified digital presence
- Improved content accessibility
- Consolidated content
- Quick access to vital cancer information
- Modernised website tools
- A platform from which to develop and run a holistic digital strategy
Why these deliverables?
The new corporate website serves Cancer Australia’s multiple audiences and their varying needs through a user-friendly, streamlined experience that allows them to filter content by selecting their user type.
Cancer patients (the site’s primary users) can quickly find reliable and up-to-date information on cancer definitions and explanations, as well as research treatments, recovery, support, and statistics.
Carers (those who support patients) can access similar content and learn how to support cancer patients and navigate the healthcare system.
Finally, health practitioners, such as oncologists and clinicians, can more easily access screening, diagnosis and statistical information.
Context
Cancer Australia’s content was spread across numerous visually different sites, creating an unwieldy IA burdened by duplicate content and lacking the direction of a streamlined strategy.
The goal of merging these sites into one corporate site was to promote simpler navigation, better brand consistency, improved accessibility, and simplified content management for the agency’s stakeholders.
Discovery
The first step was to run Discovery in collaboration with creative agency, PaperMoose. This stage focused on developing the site's UX and performing a content audit to determine which content would be migrated automatically and which required editing before moving across.
Next, our developers worked on a series of Drupal-based solutions to achieve Cancer Australia’s goals.
GovCMS PaaS development flow
We applied our expertise in developing robust websites on Skpr to the PaaS platform. This comprised a comprehensive suite of Continuous Integration tests including Linting, Frontend and Backend automated tests, and compiling and serving Storybook so stakeholders could test the design system on GovCMS environments.
Any issues we encountered were fed back to GovCMS, helping to improve the platform for the wider community.
Layout Builder
We developed a library of block types, allowing content authors to mix and match Design System components and build landing pages. With this approach, page templates aren't fixed, providing a wide range of variations and combinations for pages.
Pinto and Storybook
Using a combination of Twig and React components, we built the Design System in Storybook. Combining components to create full-page mockups allowed stakeholder validation of designs and rapid iteration. Twig templates from the Design System were inherited by Pinto - our latest contributed module, providing a developer-first object-oriented approach to Drupal theming.
Pinto seamlessly integrates these components into Drupal without duplicated templates. React components are also smoothly integrated using Pinto to provide most interactive site elements, such as autocomplete search bars, accordions, and the mega menu.
Modernised Tools
The site provides users with modernised Cancer Australia tools, such as the Interactive Body Map, which we rebuilt (converting the Twig file to JSON). We aimed to improve functionality, usability, and maintainability, enabling a better user experience while ensuring the tools could be easily updated and adapted to meet future needs.
Content migration
Automated and manual processes consolidated content from multiple Cancer Australia Drupal sites into the new website.
OpenSearch
We created search interfaces using OpenSearch as an API. Content types were stored in their indexes. Faceted search interfaces were built using React. Synonym, aggregated fields, and full-text searches provide relevant results.
User experience
The new platform balances functionality with user experience. Users can personalise their experience by selecting their user type, and content will subsequently reorganise to provide a tailored experience.
Community contribution
This project successfully demonstrated how the PreviousNext development flow provides contributions to Drupal Core, contributed modules and GovCMS. As part of this work, the team contributed to the following:
Many contributed modules were upgraded with Drupal 11 support. The Cancer Australia website was PreviousNext’s first production-ready Drupal 11 website.
The results
The merged website promotes a more straightforward navigation, better brand consistency, improved accessibility, and simplified content management for the agency’s stakeholders.
Key features include a robust Design System built with Storybook, an intuitive Layout Builder implementation with custom editorial tools, and a sophisticated search interface using OpenSearch as an API.