Craft CMS > Any other CMS
We were approached by Monument Graphics in July of 2020 regarding a massive overhaul of Aspen Recreation. At the time, their current website, which was built upon Vae CMS, was shutting down in a few months, and they needed to move from Vae CMS to a more modern tech stack.
Enter Craft CMS.
Flavors galore
Like anything built on the web these days, there are a ton of approaches one can take. The same can be said in terms of how software authors handle building said platforms for business owners to manage content, sell products, and more.
Not nearly as polished as Craft CMS
Vae CMS from our limited exposure to it wasn't all bad. The interface made finding bits of content a little difficult and as you can see from the screen captures, the client portal was a bit dated and offered no mobile view.
Where would we start?
We first started the migration process by examining all of the various data structures. Luckily for us Vae CMS sported an XML feed export. Although it wasn't all that robust, it did allow us to get most of the pertinent data, and with some custom programming we were able to compile our own feeds from that and import the data via FeedMe into our Craft CMS website.
From there we were able to break out all of the necessary sections in Craft CMS which helped set the stage for the frontend templating.
TLDR;
This project was by far the biggest project we've built here at Hybrid interactive. There were a bevy of obstacles that we faced. Through it all we were able to rely on our experience to not only wrangle in the data, but were able to leverage the powers of Craft CMS, most notably the GraphQL and content builder options, to create an easy-to-use interface for the Aspen Recreation team.
How would we put it all together?
Built with TailwindCSS, VueJS, GraphQL, and Craft CMS's robust Twig templating, we were able to build quite the powerful web application. Aspen Recreation sports a custom Site Module that feeds the Calendar, a multi-level VueJS navigation, and oh-so-many-more features that would take an eternity to outline.
All in all, it has been a good experience for us working with Monument Graphics and the fine folks at Aspen Recreation. We were able to deliver a unique experience to visitors all while creating an easy to use Authoring Experience for Aspen Recreation's website team.