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Process

Clients begin new projects with a range of experiences, expectations, and clarity about their development needs. Our role often includes helping clients identify their goals (both abstract and concrete), developing features that address those goals and the underlying architecture for the implementation of those features, and then skillfully executing the project. Our extensive usability, information architecture and business analysis experience allow us to help clients realize their vision.

The Steps

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1. IDENTIFY GOALS

The first step in every successful adventure is to know where you’re going. At Gotham City Drupal we’ve learned that the earlier we are able to collaborate with you, our client partner, in the process of exploring and establishing goals for your project, the better the outcome will be. Regardless of our time of entry, our extensive business strategy experience will help you identify and realize your goals in the most effective and efficient ways possible. 

2. IDENTIFY FEATURES

We work closely with your team to discover the most useful features for your users, and by incorporating the Goals for your site, together we will develop a Backlog, or list, for a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) for launch, as well as for subsequent development sprints. Where possible, we will organize these features into commonly-used Design Patterns in order to make the development process as efficient and budget-friendly as possible. 

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3. IDENTIFY TECHNOLOGIES

Through the use of Design Patterns, we will typically have a head start on the feature sets (in Drupal-land these are embodied by  modules and plugins).Those unusual requirements which require custom solutions will typically require custom module creation, in which process we are highly skilled and very experienced. Sometimes third-party libraries and SaaS integrations like Salesforce are also suggested, depending on goals and requirements. 

4. CREATE UX/DESIGN DELIVERABLES

Gotham City Drupal works with world class design partners to bring you independent relationships with User Experience, Information Architecture and Graphic Web Design professionals. These professionals will collaborate with your key stakeholders to create a visual language for your project. 
Upon approval of your project’s visual design, our highly-skilled front-end developers will use the work product (comp) created by your design consultants to create a beautiful mobile-first theme for your web site. 

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5. EXECUTE CODE

Now for the fun part (for us anyway!). Even though you probably won’t see much of this part of our work directly, this is where we will be giving you the most value. Our staff of Senior Drupal Engineers and Developers provide your site with elegant, reusable, scalable, secure and standards-compliant code for your project. We love our work, and it shows!

6. TEST, TEST, TEST!

At this stage of our Agile process, our developers begin with internal Quality Assurance (QA), where we are performing Functional Testing of our code using various industry-standard, automated tools and systems, including Unit Testing and VRT (Visual Regression Testing)
When our code has passed internal QA, we send the work to our clients for review, and this stage is called UAT (User Acceptance Testing). When clients “accept” each feature as “complete”, it means our developers have met their contractual obligation and everyone is happy with that piece of work.

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7. DEPLOY

The tires have been kicked, all the bugs are worked out - it’s time to launch! But first, we have an extensive checklist of SEO and Performance tests and adjustments we make which we execute to tune your site to ensure it will perform to your highest expectations, on launch day and beyond. Our Partnership with Pantheon assures us both that on launch day and every day after, the performance of your site will be as smooth, scalable and trouble-free as possible in the years to come.

GCD has helped us with development and support of our websites for many years. Their team has always been responsive and ready with solutions, no matter how complex or urgent the issue. We would highly recommend them for an honest assessment and execution of any design or development project you are planning.
Greg Smith
Chief Technology Officer
Americas Society/Council of the Americas
We have counted on Gotham City Drupal for our complex website build and maintenance needs for several years. They deliver reliable, creative solutions for the entire stack, from front end performance to back end security and myriad custom integrations in between. I have no hesitation in commending the quality of GCD's work and work ethic.
Jeremy Barth
Chief Technology Officer
Find Know Do
Gotham City Drupal is dedicated to finding solutions for clients. If there are questions or issues, Kelly and her team will seek out the answers and respond quickly to urgent requests. They've got a great sense of humor, are passionate about what they do, and care about delivering. It's a pleasure to work with them.
Carin Z.
Editor-in-Chief, AS/COA Online
Americas Society/Council of the Americas

Secure Data Handling

The security of your sensitive information is something that we take very seriously. Here are a few of the procedures for all our projects.

ENCRYPTION

When sending passwords or any other sensitive information, please only use the telephone or encrypted files. Better yet, use RSA or DSA SSH key encryption.

 

SITE ACCESS

If possible, use SSH/SCP/SFTP to access your site rather than something like FTP. Ww will always use a secure channel if possible.

Other GCD Procedures

While there are always ways to improve security, these protocols meet or exceed current industry standards.

FIRMWARE / HARD DRIVE PASSWORDS

When sending passwords or any other sensitive information, please only use the telephone or encrypted files. Better yet, use RSA or DSA SSH key encryption. 
 

ENCRYPTED DATA

Protocols like FTP send data in clear text which means anyone on the network can read your files and username/password for the site. Instead it is much safer to use SSH/SCP/SFTP to transfer files. The same applies for data sent to web sites over HTTP instead of HTTPS.

DEVELOPMENT SERVERS

When sending passwords or any other sensitive information, please only use the telephone or encrypted files. Better yet, use RSA or DSA SSH key encryption.