Maine The Way Life Should Be

GLAD and EqualityMaine partnered with Social Contxt to create an interactive database of user-generated stories of inequality and discrimination submitted by members of the LGBT community of Maine and their supporters. By utilizing Activ8, our custom distribution of Drupal, Social Contxt created a platform so stories can be left in text, video, or image form and later accessed by the community, key stakeholders, the press, and GLAD to be used in advocacy campaigns for LGBT support. Workflow and tracking features were built into the administrative interface so that GLAD can more efficiently review and edit submissions, as well as track where the stories are being used.

Homepage:

Stories are displayed in a custom story directory, which allows users to search through content and filter by county so users can find stories that really hit close to home.

On the submissions section of the website, we designed a custom, multistep interface for adding stories. Our focus was on usability -- remove the clutter, which may intimidate the user from submitting stories, and present them with just the fields they need.

We incorporated an accordion-style FAQ section to allow GLAD to place key information in front of story submitters so they do not need to click around to find information.

Users are able to upload multimedia content, videos and images, to support their stories. These items are displayed in a custom slideshow once published to the website.

Stories, once approved and published to the website, are then displayed through a custom template. A quote and images are put in front of the reader first, to give a more personal feel to the story. We created custom icons to indicate which county the story submitter lives in.

The story content type has workflow tools integrated so that GLAD and EqualityMaine staff can manage the submission review process between teams located in Maine and Boston. As items are moved between workflow states, an email is triggered to specific users to review the content. Each state has a custom review queue where admins can see notes added by the last reviewer, the last workflow state the story was in, and easily access the edit screen.

We built a custom story moderation interface on the backend, so that GLAD can easily manage and review submissions, as well as track how coalition partners are using the stories. This custom admin screen allows site administrators to filter through stories based on a number of custom fields and the story workflow state. The admin interface allows users to export contact information from queries so they story submitters can be contacted by GLAD and EqualityMaine staff.