Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation
Selected Projects | | Links: Link to website
This is the 2021 redesign of the homepage for the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation.
Overview
From their website:
The Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation is "leading a cultural revolution in the building industry that will acknowledge, cultivate, and value women’s contributions and achievements—past, present, and future. Through exhibitions, websites, media, public and invitation-only programs, BWAF collaborates with museums, universities, professional organizations, and other groups to advance women. We cultivate leaders at all levels. Through our work, we seek to build global change."
The BWAF website was redesigned in late 2020, and the design was partially implemented in 2021. I took over when the original developer was unable to continue working on the project.
BWAF initially contracted with me to complete their Podcast page. The work eventually evolved into the development of detailed podcast pages for each episode, refactoring of existing code, and overall maintenance of the website.
Traditionally, Jekyll would not be an option for a site that non-developers need to be able to update. But the recent emergence of CMSs (like Forestry.io and CloudCannon) for static site generators makes using Jekyll for a client site not only possible, but often an excellent choice. The ability to build such a site using Jekyll frees the developer and client from the monetary and time costs of maintaining, backing up, and securing a database-driven site like one using WordPress. Static sites are also more portable and generally much faster.
Creating the podcast pages required adapting an HTML5 podcast player and developing custom code blocks within the Forestry.io interface, and then developing code within the Git repository to interact with those blocks. This setup ultimately allows BWAF staff to update their website without needing to access or modify Markdown files or their front matter.
All design credit goes to the design firm Pentagram (New York City office).
Update, January 2023: For its work on the podcast series, BWAF has received a $100,000 award from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and a major grant from the Graham Foundation, and has been awarded a $30,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). See: “NEA Grant to BWAF for Podcasts Elevating ‘Forgotten Women’ in Architecture (Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation)” in Civil + Structural Engineer, January 19, 2023.
Update, March 2023: Forestry.io has reached end-of-life. The company is encouraging users to migrate to their new platform, TinaCMS, but I decided that CloudCannon was a better option for BWAF. I migrated their site from Forestry to CloudCannon with relative ease.
A selection of screenshots from the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation website (podcast pages)
Project type
Website
Roles & responsibilities
Primary role
Website Developer
Responsibilities
- Asset creation
- Server and website administration & maintenance
- Systems integration
- Website development
Technologies used
- Jekyll static site generator.
- Custom theme implementing mockups from design firm.
- Ruby development environment.
Forestry.ioCloudCannon Git-based CMS for static site generators.- Netlify JAMstack hosting platform.
Deployment method
- Content creation via Markdown files; template development using HTML, JavaScript, and SCSS partials.
- Local development using Git repository.
- Integration with
Forestry.ioCloudCannon front-end CMS for client content creation. - Application and content versioned in Git repository, commits pushed to Github, and automatically built and served by Netlify.
