New MoDOT Website

MoDOT’s website has not been significantly upgraded since 2005.  Although a template change was completed in 2013, the change was largely cosmetic.  This has led to the site falling below current technological standards.  As a result, customers using mobile devices have a difficult time navigating the site, and employees must often spend unacceptably large amounts of time making simple updates to web pages.

Current technological standards for web design and maintenance are based on Content Management System technology. Several points were considered when evaluating this approach:

  • “Contribute” web updating software is no longer supported by Adobe.
  • A CMS is in-line with web technology used by other state agencies. 
  • Mobile traffic is more than half our web traffic in urban areas. A CMS will make our site “mobile ready” without a stripped down alternative site or any special effort from MoDOT.
  • Section 508 of the Americans with Disabilities Act will have built -in compliance.
  • Updating the website will be much easier for employees. Right now it can take several minutes to an hour to update a simple webpage.
  • A CMS offers ongoing upgrades which could potentially expand functionality for the public.

Although MoDOT looked at several Content Management Systems, Drupal was chosen for a number of reasons. Other state agencies, including Office of Administration and Department of Conservation, have either already adopted or will adopt Drupal. This not only creates technological consistency across the state, it also provides a “ready-made” technical support group. Drupal installation will have cost, but the actual software is free, as are subsequent upgrades.

Best of all, Drupal is easy to use on the back end and meets all the requirements for mobile responsiveness. Since other state agencies are also in the process of migration, several nationally established companies are currently under Missouri state contract.

Updating the website with take four steps:

  1. Design—a statewide team of divisions and districts will review ideal outcomes ranging from page design to site structure.
  2. Build—a contractor builds architecture of site on remotely hosted server (probably with Amazon due to stability and flexibility).
  3. Migration—once “base” pages are in place, MoDOT district and division staff will migrate their own content from HTML to Drupal by copying and pasting content.
  4. Launch—when 95 percent (estimated 800 pages per Google Analytics) of MoDOT’s most visited pages are moved and formatted, the new site will be launched. Unmigrated pages will remain on “old” HTML server with a slightly modified address.

Target dates for the completion of the majority of migration is late summer/early fall 2018.  As with any large technological endeavor, minor adjustments will take place during the effort and after initial launch, affecting the timeline in yet unpredictable ways.  Once in place, public accessibility is expected to improve, especially with mobile devices. 

For MoDOT employees, time spent with site and page updates will be cut dramatically.  Updates that took 15 to 30 minutes should take as little as three to five minutes. Visitor’s mobile experience will also improve dramatically, thus meeting current customer expectations and preparing for inevitable increases in mobile traffic to the site.

Metrics will be captured by Google Analytics and simple (but improved) comment forms on the site. Once in place, this site technology should easily keep pace with industry standards for the next decade or longer.