Early in the morning of December 28th, we relaunched the Valley Metro website. The relaunch was timed to coincide with the start of the METRO light rail service for the city of Phoenix.
Last February the web team at Valley Metro decided to replace their existing CMS with ExpressionEngine and searched the EE Pro Network for a vendor to assist with their migration. We were chosen for the job and began by duplicating their existing site’s appearance and migrating the content into ExpressionEngine. As if that weren’t enough challenge, we also managed a server migration. As you can imagine, this didn’t go as smoothly as everyone wished.
Despite the rocky start, the team at Valley Metro offered us the opportunity to reskin the site and we worked with them to introduce a new, task based navigation scheme. The old site forced a user to choose a mode of transportation then choose fares, schedules, etc. The new system is more in line with the agency’s goal of promoting a unified transit service for the greater Phoenix metro area.
We’re currently at work on a total site redesign which will take the site to the next level. This interim solution still contains a legacy system for maintaining the bus schedules and a less than optimal pressroom section. This has been the most challenging and yet most rewarding project we’ve ever worked on. The site isn’t where we’d like it to be yet, but it’s well on its way and the staff at Valley Metro LOVES ExpressionEngine!
By the way, for anyone doubting that ExpressionEngine can handle high traffic sites, this site received received over 23,000 visits and 177,700 page views on December 29 with no problems.
