A first-pass audit of guilford.edu (Drupal 11), and the consolidation of its page types into a refreshed primary template, five reusable templates, and a portable brand frame for the non-Drupal systems it links to.
Phase 1 is a facelift & UX refresh of the existing Drupal 11 site — not a rebuild. The contract covers a refreshed primary theme plus five reusable Drupal templates, with a portable HTML/CSS/JS frame for the non-Drupal systems it links to — bringing consistency to every page type across guilford.edu.
This is a public-site first pass from a crawl of guilford.edu. A complete content-type audit needs Drupal 11 admin + GA access (prerequisite task a1). The template count & mapping should be re-confirmed against the real content model once access lands — see §6.
Program-detail is fragmented. There is no standardized program template today — /AnalyticsMajor is an old news-style page, and structured data lives in a separate system (catalog.guilford.edu). This is the top consistency opportunity, and the main in-vs-out decision for the five.
Audience priority is locked — Jean confirmed Ty’s order, so the homepage & hub CTA emphasis is final (no longer pending). And a portable brand frame (T6) has been added for the linked non-Drupal systems, which stay out of scope to rebuild.
Ten distinct page types observed on the live site — with audiences, prevalence, and the problem each one carries (tied to crawl evidence and the kickoff directives).
Front door; route every audience to its path; surface news, events & giving.
Top-of-section overview that routes to child pages — the dominant, most-reused pattern.
Editorial article, press & magazine story.
Filterable, paginated feed of stories by category.
Describe an academic program or major.
Searchable faculty / staff directory.
Individual faculty / staff / counselor bio.
Calendar feed plus individual event pages.
The long tail: policies, history, mission, aid detail, FAQ, Title IX.
Single-goal page (apply, viewbook, giving initiative).
Templates can’t cover every one-off, so we prioritize by reuse and leverage — absorbing the highest-volume, most-inconsistent types first. Each is built from a shared component kit, so a small count covers a wide surface. P0 + T1–T5 are Drupal templates; T6 is a portable frame for the non-Drupal systems the site links to.
The refreshed primary theme, expressed as the homepage (detailed in §3).
WHY Sets the Modern Heritage baseline every other template inherits.
Absorbs all hubs — Academics, Admissions, Student Life, Who We Are — and the “Information For” audience landings.
WHY Standardizes the most-reused, most-inconsistent pattern — the core consistency win.
Absorbs the highest-volume type — news & editorial — into one clean reading template.
WHY Tames the biggest legacy volume into one AA-clean template, and finally gives every story a conversion exit.
Unifies three bespoke listings — news, events & the people directory — into one pattern.
WHY Collapses three one-off listing UXs into one accessible, mobile-friendly index. Fixes the /news index reliability.
Unifies person profiles, event detail and — pending the §6 decision — program / major detail.
WHY Directly answers the program-detail fragmentation finding — a real, repeatable detail shell that can surface catalog data.
Absorbs the very-high long tail: policies, history, mission, aid detail, FAQ, Title IX.
WHY Brings the long tail into one consistent, AA-correct body shell — and adds CTAs to otherwise dead-end pages.
A standalone HTML / CSS / JS shell (header · nav · footer · CTA system · brand tokens) a system administrator drops into the linked systems that are not on Drupal 11 — catalog, events, giving — to keep them visually consistent. Those systems stay out of scope to rebuild; this brands them.
WHY Extends the refreshed look beyond Drupal without owning those systems — one frame, many platforms.
Systems the site links to that are not on Drupal 11 — catalog.guilford.edu, the events platform (if third-party), giving.guilford.edu, and similar — are out of scope to rebuild or template. Instead they receive the portable T6 frame: a drop-in HTML/CSS/JS shell a system administrator applies so they read as one brand with the refreshed site.
The refreshed theme, instantiated on the homepage. It must serve all audiences (no repeat of the 2018 enrollment-only narrowing) while ordering emphasis by the governing priority — now confirmed by Jean and locked.
All ten observed page types map onto P0 + T1–T5 (Drupal). Linked non-Drupal systems get the portable T6 frame. Remaining trade-off: program-detail rides T4 pending the §6 decision; conversion landings are a T1 variant rather than a dedicated template.
| # | Current page type | Template | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Homepage | P0 | Audience-priority pathways; prominent Give; clear Apply; focal-point fix. |
| 02 | Section / Landing (Hub) | T1 | Includes the “Information For” audience landings. The core consistency win. |
| 03 | News / Story article | T2 | Highest volume; adds a standardized footer CTA band (incl. Give). |
| 04 | News / Story listing | T3 | Fixes /news index reliability; shared filter UX. |
| 05 | Program / Major page | T4 | Drupal pages → T4 (client decision, §6). Catalog system is non-Drupal → T6 frame. |
| 06 | People directory | T3 | Profile-card variant of the shared listing. |
| 07 | Person profile | T4 | Unifies standalone profiles + embedded counselor blocks. |
| 08 | Events listing | T3 | Event-card variant. |
| 08 | Event detail | T4 | Structured-record + body + CTA variant. |
| 09 | Interior / general content | T5 | The long tail: policies, history, FAQ, Title IX, aid detail. |
| 10 | Conversion / campaign landing | T1* | Distraction-light variant; bespoke shell = change order. |
The Drupal templates are built from one modular kit — so consistency, the focal-point fix, and ADA/mobile become one-time global efforts, not per-page work. The portable T6 frame reuses the same brand tokens and header/footer/CTA components, so non-Drupal systems match too.
Because every template draws from this one kit, the image focal-point fix and the ADA / mobile work are done once, globally — not re-solved page by page. The same kit powers the T6 frame, so the look carries onto the non-Drupal systems with no extra design.
What the account lead and client need to settle for the design phase to proceed cleanly.
a1 — Obtain Drupal 11 admin + GA access. Required to enumerate the real content types, paragraph/block types & view modes, see unpublished/low-traffic types, and validate the volume & priority assumptions against GA (e.g. the ~60% direct/repeat figure). Re-confirm the template count & mapping against the actual content model once access lands.
Audience priority — locked (Jean confirmed Ty’s order). Sixth template — added: the portable T6 frame for non-Drupal systems, which are confirmed out of scope to rebuild/template.