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.

06 Oct 2016

Spain, the next tech-hub?

When you hear Madrid you may think primarily of culture, football, nightlife, but not necessarily the tech industry. But over the past three years much has changed and the tech industry is booming thanks to startups and agile ways of thinking.

Spanish startup funding is up 83% in 2015, according to a report by ASCRI (Spanish Association for Capital, Growth and Investment) and with 78% of that investment going into ICT and digital projects, Madrid is fast becoming the new tech-hub of Europe.

The Spanish economy has been hit hard by the economic downturn but the fast paced, agile thinking of the tech industry has come out stronger than ever and shows a great future ahead of it.

Tech leaders such as Google and Amazon are embracing the potential of Madrid. In 2015 Google opened Google Campus, and summer 2016 saw Amazon opening their tech-hub, one of only 3 in Europe. There are several other impressively backed incubator and startup hubs too.

“Tech talent in Spain is abundant and of high quality, but most importantly it is available.”

Adam Sedó, Amazon Spain

Earlier this year (2016) Catch opened its Madrid offices, expanding its services into the Spanish market and to access the tech talent pool Madrid has to offer.

This is exciting news for Catch and the future growth of Madrid as a cornerstone of the European tech scene. With the recent launch of Catch Studios and opening of our office in Madrid Catch are in a great position to capitalise on the burgeoning tech scene in Madrid.

Start a conversation

0207 494 3554
or
newbiz@catchdigital.com