06 Dec 2016

SES: Drupal 8, front-end teardown

We’ve just designed and built a new website for the world-leading satellite operator, SES. SES connects and enables broadcast, telecom, corporate and government customers, and enriches the lives of billions of people worldwide.

We’re really proud of how it’s turned out, and as it’s one of the first batch of high-profile large Drupal 8 websites, we’ve been asked by a wide range of people about our technical approach to building a complex site using the latest version of Drupal.

You can read our case study here on the project as a whole, but here is Stuart Wilson, Head of Frontend Development at Catch to explain a little more around our front-end approach:  

“The sheer scale of the SES website demanded a scalable and comprehensive front end system. As a team we approached the transition from design to code by creating a static style guide of individual components which would then be used to power the Drupal 8 website.

Our modular CSS was written in SASS using NPM to run build scripts and wrapping it up with PostCSS’ Autoprefixer for greater resilience to browser inconsistencies. Using BEM syntax and championing an OOCSS approach allowed us to write configurable componentry which was open to extension, but closed to core modification which meant that QA testing could happen earlier on in the build.

“The sheer scale of the SES website demanded a scalable and comprehensive front end system."

STUART WILSON, HEAD OF FRONT END DEVELOPMENT AT CATCH

Thanks to Drupal 8’s use of the Twig templating engine, we could test the flexibility of our HTML templates using mock data which was then swappable for real content from the CMS.  This created a unified theming workflow with clear ownership between the front and back end of the website and helped reduce code overhead whilst instilling scalability within the UI.

Thanks to our modular approach, we were able to utilise Drupal Paragraphs to promote greater flexibility across content types in the CMS, enabling SES to realise any combination of page designs they required.”

Visit www.ses.com and stay tuned for future SES developments. We’re continuing to work with the team in Luxembourg on increased website functionality and a range of other exciting digital products.

10 Nov 2015

ZSL wins Group Leisure Award for Best Website

ZSL London Zoo has been awarded the Best Travel and Leisure website 2015 in the Group Leisure Awards. Designed and developed by Catch in 2014, this is the second award that the site has won following on from our success in the 2014 Blue Drop Awards where it was awarded Best Mobile Experience.

Readers of Group Leisure voted for their favourite companies, attractions, destinations and individuals ahead of the 19th annual Group Leisure Awards ceremony on October 21st at the Hilton Birmingham Metropole.

Speaking about the achievement, Head of Digital Services at the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) Daniel Sprawson said: “We’re absolutely delighted to have won best website in the Best Travel & Leisure Website category. The ZSL website caters for a wide audience and we strive to ensure that we constantly provide diverse, educational and engaging content for our zoo visitors that also promotes our worldwide conservation work.”

“We’re absolutely delighted to have won best website in the Best Travel & Leisure Website category. The ZSL website caters for a wide audience and we strive to ensure that we constantly provide diverse, educational and engaging content for our zoo visitors that also promotes our worldwide conservation work.”

DAN SPRAWSON, HEAD OF DIGITAL SERVICES, ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON

This award category recognises the important role played by the internet in helping group travel organisers do their job. The website can come from any tour operator, transport supplier, attraction, tourist board, etc, and must stand out because of the useful information supplied, its user-friendly features, great design and more.

Check out the winning site at www.zsl.org

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