Hello Perchers,

we recently finished work on the website of an existing client of ours. It's an association for head chefs in hospitals, care facilities and other high-output kitchens in Germany, offering its members counsel and training in all areas needed for this very demanding job:

vkk-ev.de

Project Overview

The website was relaunched because the old Typo3 CMS installation was only maintainable by a specialised agency due to its complexity and the fact that it had grown a lot over the years.

We analysed the existing content and removed quite a lot of it, as it did not fit the criteria we had defined in our content strategy and a lot of it wasn’t even viewed by the visitors. We then did a screen design round, visualising the navigation structure and some of the more complicated graphical elements. Runway had just been released and I wanted to give it a try, so we persuaded the client to switch systems – which was easy because they had never even used the CMS login for their old site.

Features

• almost all content is editable via Perch content regions or collections
• two-level main navigation (first-level redirects to sub-page that can be chosen by the editors)
• centralised collection of call-to-actions, these CTAs can be attached at the bottom of every page
• centralised collection of member testimonials, which are shown front and center on the home page (the big blue box) randomly
• the Blog app is used and was recently updated to use repeaters for an optional gallery in each post
• the Events app is used in conjunction with the Forms app for bookable training courses (example, click „Jetzt anmelden“ to reveal sign-up form)

Why Perch

We only build customised websites and use Perch for a lot of them. Perch allows us to use structured content and have full control over the content editing experience of our clients. Using this approach also means that we define the markup in our templates, this helps avoid errors and bad semantics. The system is extendable, so adding more functionality is easy to do (see below). While building the site, I hit some hurdles. All of them were solved on the Perch forum in a matter of a few hours (thank you, people!)

What’s to come

We have some of the more complex features on hold and are waiting to implement them as soon as possible:

• Community area for members of the association with…
• … a marketplace for used equipment (client posts incoming offers and handles offers)
• … a job portal for kitchen staff (client posts job findings and mediates positions)

Credits

• Photos: Annika Schulz (annikaschulz.de)
• Text: Elisabeth Staudinger (elisabethstaudinger.de)
• Design and Development: IMMERWIEDER DESIGN (immerwiederdesign.de)

Best regards, Jannis