A fundamental part of the RBGE's activities is in education with a wide range of courses for children, school groups, members of the public as well as professional degree courses in horticulture, botany and landscape design. And crucially, the site is a vital resource for a global body scientists and researchers working in the fields of plant biodiversity and conservation. Our remit was to unite the varied requirements of all these departments under one site, in an easy-to-use, easy-to-maintain site for the 200 + staff (working from 40 different countries) and the 30,000 site visitors per month.

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Planning was a critical factor in developing the right information architecture to meet required usability and functionality goals. We worked very closely with the web project team representing key RBGE departments to produce a series of user profiles, identify work flow patterns, understand back-office processes, data import/export requirements, and develop a strategy for the integration of multiple databases.

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Our creative brief expanded on this articulating the RBGE's aim of designing a dynamic, visually appealing site that would inform, inspire, communicate, encourage and educate its users. We also wanted to show off the fantastic collection of the RBGE's photographs and give a sense of the vitality of its activities. Final designs were based on a palette of natural plant images and colours, applied to a clear navigational structure with flexible content areas to indicate seasonal variations.

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The site was designed and built into the MODx CMS framework integrating a unique series of modules developed by our in-house team to provide an Events calendar, Photo galleries, a Discussion forum and multiple Members’ area. The web-based CMS administration pages were styled and streamlined to allow more than 50 site contributors to add content (text, images, links, docs, etc) to the site. The site expanded from its original delivery size of 200 page to over 700 by launch and continues to meet all accessibility and SEO standards.

2009 will see the launch of a new RBGE intranet and future phases will include a fully-fledged Kids' Zone.

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