| Case Study - Art School |
Client:Non-Profit Art Foundation operating an Art School and Art Gallery
The non-profit maintained three different websites; one for the non-profit itself, one for the art school, and one for the gallery. Each one was built with standard HTML. It was very difficult for volunteers who lacked a technical background to maintain and update the sites. The class registration process was manual and contained many redundant data entry tasks. All art purchases had to be completed in person at the Gallery. There was no way for gallery patrons to purchase art pieces on line.
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Technology Before: | Technology After: |
Web Hosting Environment: One site on Windows the other two on Linux Website: hard-coded HTML Customer Relationship Management System: local copy of Microsoft Access and Excel Class Registration: Proprietary system built upon Microsoft Access E-Commerce: none Accounting System: Quickbooks | Web Hosting Environment: Open Source Linux Website: A single installation of Drupal powering 3 separate domains Customer Relationship Management System (Course Management): Moodle E-commerce: PDG commerce Accounting System: Quickbooks |
Goal: | Solution: | Result: |
| The client wanted to expand and unify their web presence across all three sites, add e-commerce functionality to the gallery and eliminate redundant data entry during the class registration process at the school. | For this project we built the three websites on a single installation of Drupal. Drupal is a powerful, open source content management solution that allows for great scalability. We customized Moodle, a free open source course management system, to manage all class registration data. Since the client used Quickbooks for their accounting platform we decided to use PDG commerce for the e-commerce portion of this integration. While we usually try to stick with open source, there are times when proprietary solutions offer irreplaceable functionality. Here, PDG commerce addressed the unique needs of our client by allowing online transactions to flow seamlessly to and from Quickbooks. Although PDG is proprietary, it still uses an open source MySQL database. We mapped the e-commerce database fields to those in Moodle so that information could be read directly by each program. The same e-commerce build was further customized to allow for art sales in the gallery. | We were able to virtually eliminate redundant data entry while preserving the existing accounting infrastructure. Once instructors set up their classes in Moodle, students could enroll online. Class rosters were automatically updated as students enrolled. Waiver forms and class material lists were automatically emailed to students. Payments for classes automatically flowed into Quickbooks. All three web sites could be updated and expanded upon through a simple web based user interface by anyone who was familiar with basic word processing. The art gallery could sell art online and and as payments were processed and shipped out the transactions were automatically recorded in Quickbooks. |
