The Church of England was replacing its main website, with a focus on better user experience, navigation and accessibility. One of the biggest pieces of content was the worship texts and resources: Common Worship, the Psalter, the Book of Common Prayer and more. Around 800 pages had to be moved from print and epub formats into a Drupal website… and every word and every piece of formatting appearing exactly as it does in the printed books, for legal reasons. That was my responsibility to deliver.
The problem: a fixed deadline and a squeezed window
The source material was 350 epub files and 300 images, and new site wasn’t ready to receive content until late in the schedule – but the launch date couldn’t move. Every delay elsewhere in the project came out of the time available to load the content.
Preparing everything before the site was ready
I extracted the HTML from the epubs and hired an XML specialist to convert the epub styling into styles the new site could use, so the formatting would exactly match the print books. I worked with the external development team to implement the formatting correctly on the new site. That meant the content was ready to go in the moment the platform could take it.
Specifying what the site still needed
I worked with the Church House digital communications team and technical staff from the external design agency to prepare the in-development site for this content. Where it couldn’t yet handle something, I specified the additional requirements, wrote bug reports and tested patches as they came through. I was also clear about which limitations I could work around and which were genuinely blocking, and I explained why, so nobody was surprised later.
Working fast without losing accuracy
When the window for uploading content finally opened, I brought in two more freelancers to enter content alongside me, and with triple capacity we managed the work so the output pace could be managed without compromising accuracy.
The result
The whole archive went live on deadline, and is part of the award-winning Church of England website.
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