The contract included consulting, design, programming, support and hosting of eight projects as well as the city administration's intranet.
The websites were already based on TYPO3 (version 4.1), but they no longer met current requirements. Use on mobile devices was only possible to a limited extent, and the pages were not barrier-free.
The new portals went live on February 20, 2014. Individual designs were created for each project on a common technical basis. The use of responsive design means that the output is automatically adapted to the respective screen size.
In September 2018, all websites were upgraded to TYPO3 version 8.7, followed by an upgrade to TYPO3 version 10 LTS in 2021 and an upgrade to version 11.5 in 2023.
All websites were gradually converted to a new layout, starting with the municipal website.
Technical data
The project comprises over 8,000 pages with 45,000 content elements, 35,000 images or media and 4,000 news articles. Around 150 editors maintain the content. In 2013, the pages were accessed about 5 million times, with a strong upward trend. The existing content of the website was taken over, but updated and restructured.
Solr search engine
In order to find content quickly, a powerful search function based on Apache Solr with faceting was implemented.
Extension development
Around 25 new TYPO3 extensions were programmed for the project. The generally usable extensions were published in the TYPO3 Extension Repository and thus also used in many other websites. Below is a brief description of the most important extensions:
Events (events2)
The central component is a convenient management of events. Every conceivable requirement was taken into account in the design: single-day and multi-day as well as recurring events, one or more times per day, different times per weekday, additional dates, cancellations, postponements and exceptions. So rules like "every 2nd Thursday of the month, but not on 3/13 and two hours earlier than usual on April 10" are possible. The dates can be exported in iCal format. A comfortable search, e.g. also for free events, is also integrated.
City map (maps2)
The aim was to be able to assign a map to every address on the website. As the previous Google Maps extensions for TYPO3 were obviously no longer maintained, we developed a new extension. POI (Point of Interest) data records can be created and grouped into POI collections. All points can be assigned to categories. Individual points, lines, areas (e.g. industrial estates) and radii (2 km around point X) can be created on the map. A radius search is also implemented.
Clubs (clubdirectory)
This extension offers a directory of clubs. These can be assigned to categories and districts. Each club can be assigned several addresses with map display (e.g. clubhouse, sports facility, office). The clubs can manage their entries in the frontend itself.
Daycare centers (daycarecenter)
This extension enables the management of day care centers. After selecting the district, age of the child and desired care time, the suitable daycare centers are listed.
Schools (schooldirectory)
Information about the schools can be displayed via this extension. For each entry in theschool database, information such as types of care, meals offered, etc. can be stored.
Yellow pages directory (yellowpages2)
In the business directory, companies can enter themselves and store information about their offer. The entries must be activated by a backend user after verification. Once a year, the authors are automatically asked to confirm that the entries are up-to-date.
More extensions
A number of other extensions were developed for the new websites, including for the display of current construction sites with automatic data import, directory of tenders, social facilities, responsibilities for job centers and the automated publication of content on Facebook and Twitter.
On the intranet, extensions are used for the telephone directory, language skills, circulars and a literature database.
URLs of the new Internet portals
Portal of the City of Pforzheim www.pforzheim.de
City Theatre www.theater-pforzheim.de
Fire Department www.feuerwehr-pforzheim.de
Business Development www.ws-pforzheim.de
City Library www.stadtbibliothek.pforzheim.de
Ausbildungsportal www.ausbildungpforzheim.de
Climate Protection Portal www.klimaschutz-pforzheim.de
Cultural Education at Schools www.kulturmachtschule.pforzheim.de
Hosting and CDN
All portals are hosted on one of our servers in Germany. For the delivery of static content such as images, Javascript or PDF files, a Content Delivery Network (CDN) is used. This ensures that all content is available worldwide with the shortest possible loading times.
Particularly important was the optimization of loading times for use on mobile devices. Even with an EDGE connection, the loading time of most pages is only 2-5 seconds.
This page contains automatically translated content.