NYU Libraries Issues RFP For Website Development

NYU Libraries, in collaboration with NYU Journalism, invites experienced web design agencies to submit a confidential written proposal to redesign an academic site that will present a collection of materials on undercover journalism, and to migrate content from the previous version of the site. The design, content, and functionality for the new website must be completed, tested, and ready to go live by the planned launch date of November 7, 2018.

Background:

Undercover Reporting was original published in 2009 as a collaboration between NYU Libraries and the Department of Journalism, and can be viewed at http://undercoverreporting.org/. The site is an accompaniment to the book, Undercover Reporting: The Truth About Deception, written by Brooke Kroeger, Professor of Journalism and Director of NYU Journalism’s Global and Joint Program Studies. Over time, the site has become a comprehensive and acclaimed database of materials in this area.

The existing site is built in Drupal 6, and needs an upgrade to a more contemporary content management system that allows for easier maintenance by non-programmers. New content is added on a semi-regular basis, thus, a user-friendly interface for adding and editing content is essential. The interface should allow for multiple users with different levels of site permissions to add and modify content. The new site must be hosted on NYU’s Web Hosting service, which is an instance of Reclaim Hosting Domain of One’s Own shared hosting service that includes FTP and SSH access (but no sudo/admin privileges). The incumbent team will be required to design and build a new site and to develop to implement a streamlined migration plan to bring content from the existing site to the new site.

The primary goals of this project are to maintain the existing site’s functionality while migrating to a more user-friendly platform, and to update and modernize the overall site design.

Technology Overview

Given its robust metadata and organizing functionality, we strongly prefer the new site be built in Omeka. Additionally, with the Omeka development team’s new focus and prioritization of

Omeka S for the foreseeable future, we prefer the site be built in Omeka S (rather than Classic). We recognize that Omeka S is a relatively new platform and it is unlikely that firms will have a robust portfolio of Omeka S sites, so previous sites built using Omeka Classic are an acceptable substitute.

With that said, our team is open to proposals using other platforms, such as WordPress, that have an easy to use interface and maintain the site’s existing functionality.

Scope of Work:

Overall Work Process

Vendor will design and build a website as well as migrate content from the old website to the new. Specifically, the Vendor will:

• Deliver a weekly status report to Customer indicating work completed, work planned for the upcoming week, and any questions or anticipated change in the schedule.
• Agree to acceptance testing by the Customer of final delivered product, which will consist of:

○ Adherence to the accepted design

○ Successful migration of item files, metadata, and static page content

○ Successful deployment on NYU servers

Before coding begins, the Vendor will submit a detailed proposal and undergo two rounds of feedback:

• Vendor will submit a detailed design proposal by August 15, 2018, containing a migration plan and a proposed site design that includes visual elements (e.g. wireframe) and a description of how functional requirements will appear on the new site, or propose alternative solutions
• Within one week, Customer will review proposal and provide detailed feedback to Vendor
• Within one week, Vendor will submit updated proposal that incorporates Customer’s revisions, or proposes alternative solutions
• Within one week, Customer will review updated proposal and provide detailed feedback
• Within one week, Customer and Vendor will agree upon final design proposal

Functional Requirements

The detailed design proposal and site development work must address the following functional requirements:

• Site must be compatible with the latest versions of all modern browsers.
• Site uses responsive design for effective viewing on all devices
• Site must be hosted on NYU’s Web Hosting service
• Completed site receives zero “errors” when using the Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool (aka WAVE)
• Use an open source platform with a strong developer community that has relatively easy processes for adding/editing content and for basic site maintenance
• Metadata is accessible via an endpoint, preferably a JSON endpoint
• Ability to create multiple user accounts to add, modify, and delete content
• Accounts should have different levels of permissions, including:

○ Administrator: ability to add, modify, and delete content; add and remove users; customize site settings; ability to edit image slider

○ Editor: ability to add and modify content but not delete; does not have ability to add or remove users or to customize site settings; ability to edit image slider

• Any code created for the project (e.g. custom Omeka theme) will be made available as open source using the GNU General Public License v3.0 license
• While the item and collection templates will likely be dynamically generated, the vendor will add navigational comments in the code explaining where each piece of core functionality is located
• GUI interface (e.g. WYSIWYG editor) to edit non-template pages (e.g. Homepage, About page)
• GUI interface to add/edit items and clusters. Users have ability to edit all metadata fields in this interface

The detailed design proposal and site development work must include a Navigation Bar, to be included on all pages, with the following specifications:

• Home: link to Homepage
• Browse: drop-down with links to cluster landing page and items landing page
• About: link to About page
• How to Use: link to How to Use page
• Rights: link to Rights page
• Simple search box
• Link to advanced search page

Due Date:

July 25th

Address:

Zach Coble

Head, Digital Scholarship Services

NYU Libraries Room 508

70 Washington Square South

New York, NY 10012

MWW PR has digital and website capabilities.