Nashville Zoo at Grassmere

The redesign of Nashville Zoo's website was the largest project that we have had the pleasure of tackling to date. The client was interested in more control through the use of a more robust content management system (CMS) as well as adding new features such as e-commerce, the ability to create members-only content, multimedia integration, and more granular display of events at the Zoo to allow guests to better plan their trip.

One of the Zoo's prime interests was the development of an expandable, full-featured event and program registration system, complete with e-commerce capabilities. To complete this task, we started with the outstanding Ubercart Event Registration module because it worked so well with the Webform module to allow administrators to collect a great deal of information from visitors. Quickly discovering that, while a great place to start, this module did not fit our client's needs as-is, we used it as a framework for a new custom module that added some additional features -- specifically, the ability to dynamically hide price-altering attribute options and alter the email confirmations so that all webform and attribute values could be sent to the guest as a receipt of purchase.

Additionally, the Zoo needed a robust reporting system to allow their administrators to mark their e-commerce products as processed -- i.e., updated in a separate contact management application that they run concurrently. We enlisted several modules to accomplish the task, most importantly Webform MySQL Views which exposes the data submitted in a webform and makes it accessible to other modules. From this starting point we were able to create several Views which displayed the data for easy entry and included a few custom fields to allow the admins to clear the records off of the pending list.

We're expecting the Zoo to get more connected with their members and guests over the coming years as they launch more interactive content designed to enhance an already great membership package as well as transition new folks from occasional visitors into long time supporters of this fantastic organization.