The New York Landmarks Conservancy

Spring 2008
http://www.nylandmarks.org

NYLandmarks.org was converted into an Expression Engine web site from several old databases, a weird custom CMS and a non-technical user group.

The process

After meeting with the New York Landmarks Conservancy staff FusionLab and I sat down to think about what the site architecture could become. The old NYLandmarks.org site was built on top of an old custom CMS but it was clear that the data was salvageable and could be reshaped, imported into Expression Engine and become the base of the new site, with several thousand landmarks already included it was the first place to start. Several custom sections inside of EE were defined to prepare for the import. While I got started on working with the old data, FusionLab worked on the the information architecture and design.

After looking at the existing data and assets (mainly images and pdf's) several PHP scripts reshaped the data and imported it into Expression Engine's custom sections that were created earlier. Once the data was in we started to implement the designs into EE templates.

Overall, as my first Expression Engine project NYLandmarks.org was a success. It was good to work with FusionLab on the project and find new ways to display modern historic information in a visually interesting and readable format.