The 
Local Invest Showcase website is operated by for UK Trade and Investment (UKTI). BrightLemon were commissioned to design, build and support the site. Vincenzo is a Drupal developer here at BrightLemon and he was part of the project team for this site build. We took some time to ask Vinny a few questions about the project.

 

UKTI wanted to create an online platform that could grow as they needed. Due the flexibility of Drupal we have been able to give the client stable releases starting with a simple site with few content types. Then over time we have added more complex functionality such as a styled search interface and multilingual support. 

 

The client asked for the site to be multilingual. They wanted to start with a specific section and then extend translation to the whole site. We used the Entity Translation module and we enabled translation only on a few content types. This configuration flexibility ensured our client had full control over which content types had translation enabled, as well as the power to turn translation on and off for new and existing content types respectively.

 

I like the homepage map with its custom background and bubbles which change position based on pin position. We used Google Maps and SmartInfoWindow to create this.

 

Drupal delivered most of the functionality with the basic installation such as content types taxonomy, search etc.

 

I would like to improve the site’s search engine by implementing Drupal’s Solr module. This would make the search function faster and more accurate. 

 

The site is fully responsive and works well on touch screen devices of all sizes.

 

Drupal is easy to expand and easy to maintain.