Meet the new Palantir.net!

We started with several strategy meetings where we discussed what our goals were for the site and what we wanted it to accomplish, followed by multiple rounds of functional specification and wireframe development. This was followed by a development sprint, where the basic framework of the site was built out in Drupal prior to applying the design theme, which of course was built using sustainable development methods. Finally, the site was run through our recently revised quality assurance (QA) script and reviewed by multiple team members prior to launch.

The goal of the new Palantir.net is to better illustrate the connections between our team, our work, and the things that we’re thinking about and doing in the community. To that end, we made extensive use of the CCK and Views modules to create relationships between the site’s team member profiles, case studies, and blog posts. You can now see what projects an individual team member has worked on, as well as what blog posts and other content they’ve written for the site. Blog posts about projects are featured on that project’s case study page, which also feature more in-depth project descriptions, screenshots and lists of the team members that worked on them.

The completely revamped Blog section allows you to browse our archives in a variety of ways and allows us to highlight both individual posts and blog series that share a common theme, like “Better Know a Module”. Individual blog post pages are now able to display related content, such as other blog posts, case studies, and other pages on the site. And if you don’t have time to read our blog, but still want to know what we’re thinking about, the latest post from our Twitter feed is displayed on the footer of every single page.

Finally, the site’s backend makes use of the Total Control module, which creates a completely configurable admin dashboard that gives less technical folks (like me) the ability to quickly and easily manage content and comments on the site without having to memorize the sometimes quirky structure of Drupal’s administration area. All the modules on the site are kept current using Palantir’s Drush-based update script.

Thanks go out to the entire Palantir team that worked on this project in one way or another, especially Michael Mesker, Matt Butcher, Greg Leroux, Evan Clossin, and Amy O’Malley, who formed the core project team.

While we’re continuing to tweak, refine, and add content to the site every day, (as well as resolve a few cobwebs with some legacy content that got ported after QA), all-in-all we hope you enjoy the new site as much as we do!