work convert website
DESIGNER/ DEVELOPER
WEBPAGES
LINES OF PLUGIN CODE
LAUNCH DATE
employer
State of Idaho • Tax Commission
objective
Adobe stopped supporting ColdFusion in early 2019. The existing website for the Tax Commission was written in ColdFusion. So, we needed to convert to another platform and the State of Idaho chose WordPress (see webmaster resources).
results
The redesign of this 600 webpage website is currently undergoing multiple review processes, including content verification, functionality testing, mobile testing, and subject matter expert testing. The new website should go live in the summer of 2021.
my roles
ux design, ui design, front-end development, back-end development
tools
PAPER AND PENCIL
ADOBE PHOTOSHOP
WORDPRESS
BOOTSTRAP
SQL SERVER DATABASE
PHPSTORM
PHP
process and methods
The process was fairly straightforward: move the website from ColdFusion to WordPress. Very little time was spent on user research or usability testing because ColdFusion was no longer supported and therefore a security hole that needed to be plugged sooner rather than later. However, I did incorporate the following design upgrades:
- The existing page structure was flat, so I created a hierarchy with help from subject matter experts from different departments. This gave us wayfinding help from a breadcrumb.
- The website is very content heavy, and had a few gray helper boxes with links within the page and to related pages. However, this box had a mix of both types of links, so I broke them out into their own sections on the page. This mirrors the layout of developer resource webpages from Bootstrap , Microsoft Azure DevOps , and Google .
- Most of the content was derived from old PDF guides, and users needed to follow a certain order when reading the webpages; however, the existing website did not link the webpages together. So, I ordered the pages with help from subject matter experts in the different departments, and I made it easy for users to see what the next page was with a easily visible button.
more screenshots
Exemption
Penalty and Interest Estimator
Beer Tax Forms
Income Tax Hub
