http://www.SpaceFoundation.org
The Space Foundation team just launched a brand new Drupal 7 website Monday, January 31, 2012. Designed and developed in-house, www.SpaceFoundation.org uses the fusion base theme with a custom sub-theme named "Space Foundation One" built on top. The new design features a clean, flexible, colorful new look that appeals to a wide ranging set of audiences that visit our site. Based on the underlying theme, "windows to the galaxy", the background currently features a nearly-live image of the sun pulled in from the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) once per hour (more info on how that works here). The design remains flexible to feature all sorts of fun stuff like that as we move forward.
Typically I'm a fan of building custom themes from scratch, but I needed something a little more standards based that would share well with my co-web developer/designer and future developers as needed. fusion was a great choice as it was easy to alter, make additions to, and using fusion as a base theme actually made the design process go much quicker than expected. A delightful bonus was the fusion accelerator/skinr module which made block placement and styling a snap. Altering the grid system was a quick process when I needed to squeeze everything in a bit to fit our "social bar" tab feature and "cool space highlight" tab on the left and right edges of the design.
Website features include:
- Comprehensive, easy-to-find information on Space Foundation programs and initiatives
- More than 2,400 pages of upcoming events, news briefs, press releases, the Space Watch e-newsletter, white papers, news from our partners and more
- Colorful photo galleries and videos
- Lots of downloadable program overviews, fact sheets
- A wide array of free resources for teachers and students (and a LOT more coming soon!)
- Enhanced Space Foundation Indexes that provide daily updates on space industry market performance
- Features that let you share, bookmark, connect to links, access social media sites and provide feedback
- Stunning and colorful design that includes continually updated images of the sun from Images from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO)
- More cool features and enhancements to come
- Clear information on how to find us and how to contact us
- Content maintained by several team members without a lot of technical experience required (gotta love Drupal for that!)
Take a look and let us know what you think! We're still working out things here and there and could use all the feedback we can get. Also, be sure to share with your friends via the "Share This" button to the right of any page. ;D
Thanks for a great base theme!
