A Platform of Huge Importance, Serving a Mission of Honor

The 9/11 MEMORIAL & MUSEUM is a memorial and museum in New York City commemorating the September 11, 2001 attacks, which killed 2,977 people, and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, which killed six. 

The museum needed a new site with a single integrated application to increase speed and efficiency and to withstand huge spikes in traffic. 

Accessibility across multiple mobile computing platforms was also important to make content available and encourage donations on a variety of devices. 

We helped the organization meet its fundraising goals and developed custom coding for older browsers, multimedia galleries that functioned on mobile devices, and device detection that worked on cached pages. 

The 9/11 MEMORIAL & MUSEUM needed a newer, faster, and more efficient site to handle the heavy traffic loads. The original site was a loosely connected assortment of independent applications including a storefront, blog, and donation pages. The new site needed a single integrated application to increase speed and efficiency and to withstand huge spikes in traffic.  

Accessibility across multiple mobile computing platforms was also important to make content available and encourage donations on various devices. The 9/11 MEMORIAL & MUSEUM wanted the site to encourage support and donations for the organization's programming, and they felt that security and speed were a priority. We knew we had to expand Drupal’s standard capabilities. 

We implemented a rapid, lightweight theme that assisted visitors seeking comfort and supported the museum's mission of paying homage to the lives lost in the attack. We looked beyond Drupal's standard mobile toolkit configuration to help the site function quickly and efficiently during heavy traffic loads, utilizing Javascript-based device detection. 

We helped the organization meet its fundraising goals by building an enhanced set of donor features that integrate Drupal with the industry standard Raisers Edge CRM, a powerful fundraising tool built to ease donor management. Visitors can now purchase their own commemorative cobblestones online, and this implementation has increased the number and frequency of donations. The site is also incredibly visual, featuring screen resolution optimization for phones and tablets and ImageMagick image manipulation.   

We developed custom coding for older browsers, multimedia galleries that functioned on mobile devices, and device detection that worked on cached pages. We also created a custom-built mobile integration API to allow visitors to easily find their cobblestones during their visits to the memorial plaza and an easy-to-use administrative control panel so admins could update content, manage donations, manage memberships, and place merchandise orders.  

Shortly after the site was launched, site traffic unexpectedly spiked due to national news relevant to the 9/11 tragedy and Middle East conflict news coverage. We were proud to see that, despite the unanticipated timing, the site functioned without problems.