The Client
Penn State News is the official news source for Penn State University.
The Situation
Penn State News, a digital platform that drives 7 million annual page views, was powered by a highly customized, complicated back end. With 250 content editors and a syndication network that includes more than 20 statewide Penn State campuses, the platform needed to be optimized for speed and real-time collaboration. Penn State News wanted to build a best-in-class content authoring experience that was secure, reliable, and scalable.
The Challenge
Penn State News has a massive amount of content, storing more than 60,000 stories and 100,000 images. Additionally, the organization multi-purposes its content into daily large-scale email digests. Iterating and optimizing all this content on the platform was difficult. Penn State News needed a more flexible solution that empowered it to create and maintain pages for specific departments, organizations, and institutions. Creating a compelling, mobile-first experience for readers across the Penn State community was a big undertaking.
The Solution
Penn State News partnered with open-source product agency Mediacurrent to reimagine its publishing technology stack. Mediacurrent successfully migrated Penn State News from a monolithic back end to a decoupled Drupal site, using the JavaScript framework Gatsby. Working closely with the Penn State team, Mediacurrent created a living design system that empowered users and provided a repeatable standard for how Penn State can both enhance and protect its brand.
The Results
The decoupled and open source Drupal architecture provides the News team with the tools to create a compelling digital storytelling experience. The new platform blends the publishing power of Drupal with a future-flexible front-end framework, Gatsby and React. It marks a new chapter in performance and speed for the News team to achieve its editorial ambitions across Penn State University and beyond.
