In late August 2008 Grey Vancouver was awarded the contract to redesign the Vancouver Magazine website. Vancouver’s premier magazine covers the events, people and issues that make this city so vibrant. Mixing quality journalism with definitive service content, it reflects Vancouver’s emergence as a dynamic international urban centre.
Despite the amount of content published, Vancouver Magazine did not utilize a CMS system. All documents were authored and uploaded as static files using Dreamweaver, a process that involved manual tracking of files and updates in multiple locations. By leveraging a modern, scalable CMS they are able to make their web presence dynamic, mixing in social elements (comments, ability to share links) and giving their audience multiple ways to consume the content (location search, RSS, editor's picks).
Based on VanMag’s requirement of a solid content management system that could also foster an online community, Drupal was a natural choice. The precedent for Drupal based publishing websites for print magazines had already been demonstrated by Spin, PopSci and US Magazine. In addition, the client preferred Drupal’s open source license as there was no vendor lock-in to contend with.
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