ACE Aotearoa

Ace Aotearoa - homepage

Website: aceaotearoa.org.nz (site has since been redesigned) - view screenshot

Size: 300+ pages

Government status: Government Agency

My professional status: independent web designer/developer

Website client: ACE Aotearoa

Dates: March-April 2015

Categories: Client liaison, Project manager, Writing for the web, Content-loader, Drupal, Government websites, Large sites

Brief: Adult and Community Education (ACE) Aotearoa is the lead body for adult and community educators and a voice for adult learners. It is a membership organisation which represents both its members and the wider ACE sector. It provides advocacy and direction for policy development and its implementation.

ACE Aotearoa is a dynamic network of adult and community educators committed to a society based on Te Tiriti o Waitangi, a guiding framework that enables ACE Aotearoa to give due recognition to the status of Māori as Tāngata whenua, and Tāngata Tiriti as citizens of our shared country. It actively promotes and supports the diversity of lifelong learning in Aotearoa New Zealand and fosters collaboration and cooperation to the advantage of adult learners, educators and providers.

I helped the organisation to figure out how to update their website after their regular web editor left, creating and removing pages, content-loading, making graphics, and editing/proofreading content. The website runs on the Drupal CMS.

My responsibilities included:

  • Figuring out how to add content to the website, updating as requested - including adding or removing pages, editing content, updating or creating graphics, proof-reading
  • Updating the organisation's Annual Conference event registrations via the Lil Regie booking system, ensuring that it is set up correctly and is working properly.

The website has been built in Drupal, which can be a bit of a mission to get your head around at first. In addition, the website's previous Webmaster (based at another website design company) was too busy to provide us with any handover documentation or have a handover meeting with us, which was a pity.

Never mind - I always enjoy a challenge, and with a bit of effort I was able to figure out what was going on with the help of the good people at ACE. I've worked with Drupal websites before, and once you get a mental picture of how the site has been constructed, editing becomes much easier.