a post from Juxtaprose. . .

We’ve had several significantly large website projects ongoing this year, and it’s time to announce the launch of one of these big new sites (yay!):

The Kaufman Center is a non-profit in New York City, that combines under one roof a world renowned concert hall (Merkin Concert Hall), a community arts school (Lucy Moses School) and an innovative public school for musically gifted kids (Special Music School). And, as a next step, after their recent architectural renovation (and, as they describe it, reinvention) of the concert hall and building façade, the Kaufman Center brought us in to similarly reinvent their presence online.

We worked closely with the Kaufman Center staff, board, teachers, parents and students. Early in the project, Anastasia and I were in New York conducting sessions with everyone to develop a broad and lasting strategy for the site. And, from that point forward, we’ve been involved in designing and developing every aspect of the site: information architecture, site content (writing, editing, proofing, content management), CMS work (selection, configuration, customization), branding and visual design, information design, graphic and photo selection, Flash design and development, HTML and CSS development, Javascript and back-end development, etc.!

The new site includes hundreds of informational pages, plus pages for each of their concert events, and for each of their music, theater and dance classes for preschoolers, children, teens and adults. Factoring in the pages for the site’s news blog, the press release blog, press image library, concert performer indexes (“tags”), and online events calendar, the new site launched with upwards of 1,000 pages. And, each year, it’s designed to regularly and significantly grow, as well.

Although, for many years, we’ve used WordPress as our CMS of choice for smaller sites, since 2004, we’ve also been using Expression Engine (EE) for larger sites. We’re using EE a lot these days—we have several other EE sites that have recently launched, or are in the works (more on these soon). We definitely find EE a better choice for larger sites, and are also sometimes recommending it over WordPress on some smaller sites as well.

Here are our official “site credits” for the Kaufman Center site:

Anastasia Fuller, Visual Design and Creative Lead
Jay Fienberg, Information Architect and Technical Lead
Jason Fuller, Web and Flash Developer
Eve Tonkin, Copywriter and Content Manager
Megan Anderson, Copyeditor and Content Manager

Definitely check out the new Kaufman Center site—there’s a lot to explore. And, when you’re in NYC, definitely go see a concert at Merkin Concert Hall—it’s really a fantastic hall featuring interesting performances!