The Downtown Coordinating Council requested of Walsh a new website to serve as a directory of consumer-facing businesses and public events as part of an effort to support the rejuvination of Downtown Tulsa into an extremely active zone. Seven districts, scattered though historic downtown and all within walking distance of each other, host countless art galleries, museums, performance venues, nightlife establishments, fine dining opportunities, centers of worship and education, and many residential options.
I served as lead developer, originally building the site using WordPress in May of 2011. Using a collection of stock and custom plugins, events and businesses were stored separately. The site was extremely successful but as it grew, we noticed a lack of flexibility that would be available in a content management system that had a more nimble approach to storing multiple content types, dates, and other data. Additionally, as Downtown and site participation have grown, collecting all the necessary information became cumbersome. In May of 2012, I rebuilt the site using Drupal to store pages, businesses, events, and various taxonomies using Drupal's own constructs. This allowed for for more specific data modeling and organization, moderated public submission, and detailed views.