Our longest full-service client, the nonprofit Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) is North America’s oldest and largest organization devoted to supporting archaeology worldwide. The AIA has been with Castle Builder Design since 1997, when CBD founder and lead designer Amélie Walker was webmaster of Archaeology, its popular print magazine. Today we design, develop and maintain all AIA websites.
Every issue, Castle Builder reformats Archaeology‘s print content to make it engaging for the web, and then uploads it to Archaeology.org. We manage the site’s original web features and content—the Interactive Digs are especially popular—and design and distribute the monthly Archaeology e-Update to more than 75,000 subscribers.
Castle Builder Design works closely with the magazine’s advertising department on web ad placement, advertiser emails and special advertising sections such as the Texas Interactive Map. (We also wrote all the copy for the map.) Castle Builder recently upgraded Archaeology.org to the OpenX ad server to better manage and track web ads.
Castle Builder Design took over management of Archaeological.org in 2006. In 2010, tasked with updating the website to bring it into the modern age yet still reflect the AIA’s 130-year-old history, we completely redesigned and rebuilt it, converting an old system to the content management system Drupal. This A-to-Z overhaul included the conversion of hundreds of pages of existing content.
The new back-end system allows for better site organization, easy updates, job and event-listing management, fellowship application submission and review, an online store, and password-protected areas for staff, society officers and board members.
At the end of the project, we spent a day training the staff on-site in Boston. Castle Builder continues to work daily with AIA staff members to maintain the website and to develop new features such as the online scavenger hunt puzzles we recently created to mark National Archaeology Day.
The American Journal of Archaeology is the academic/professional journal of the AIA. Castle Builder Design began managing the AJA website in 2007. We converted it to Drupal in 2011, then trained the electronic content editor how to use Drupal.