EKHN completes headless CMS relaunch with TYPO3
Overview: The Protestant Church in Hesse and Nassau
The Protestant Church in Hesse and Nassau (EKHN) is a protestant church body representing Germany’s western Hesse and Rheinland Palatinate regions and a part of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD). With over 1.3 million members, volunteers, and professionals across more than 1,075 parishes, the church is one of the region’s largest religious organizations where it shapes spiritual and cultural life.
In 2022, the EKHN moved ahead with a relaunch of its website in an effort to make its digital presence more accessible and appealing to younger target audiences. It chose punkt.de to manage and execute the project, which ultimately went live in October of 2023.
A Headless CMS for Flexible Frontend Development
A central requirement of the project was a headless CMS architecture that would allow for flexible frontend development. TYPO3 was seen as the ideal content management solution for the project, based on its capacity to support headless projects, and it being fully equipped with a wide range of other important features and capabilities. The punkt.de team sought to underpin this requirement with appropriate taxonomy and information architecture.
Additionally, the website would need to adhere to core accessibility standards, allowing for an improved user experience, including making the new site optimized for scrolling on mobile devices, and including key third-party software that would enhance its performance and deliver an improved output to visitors.
Ultimately, the end product would need to be a centralized content management solution to enable EKHN’s team of editors to easily create new content across multiple frontend outputs, while delivering a modern, appealing and accessible frontend that visitors can enjoy.
Headless CMS Extension with TYPO3
Hands-on approach
punkt.de adopts a hands-on approach when supporting clients in their digital transformation. The team often works alongside their customers, including through in-person meetings and workshops that enable them to create a clear vision for what the end product should look like. Additionally, they have a longstanding relationship with UX/UI partners “madein”, and are able to deliver a range of services, including DevOps, something unique within the agency landscape, but which delivers another layer of support to customers.
Headless extension
The headless CMS solution, born out of a need to handle frontend outputs separate from the backend content management infrastructure, was installed using the TYPO3 ‘headless’ extension.
Third-party Tools
Another important aspect of this project’s realization was integrations with third-party tools. This enabled the EKHN team to connect their TYPO3 solution to external software they use for key tasks.
Some of the most important integrations included Matomo as a web analytics tool and Cleverreach for the EKHN newsletter. In addition to those, lesser known, but equally important integrations such as address directory ISIDOR Mobile and Ev. Termine for event data management on the website were also added to the custom-made solution created by punkt.de.
Finally, smart search extension Apache Solr has also been added to the EKHN website, enabling faster search results for visitors.
Accessibility
With regards to accessibility, numerous steps were taken to ensure that the browsing experience for all visitors was pleasant and without major hurdles. One of the key accessibility-related additions to the website’s frontend output is a contrast mode, ensuring that content is visible and legible for all visitors. Find out more on the punkt.de blog.
A Powerful New Website
The project’s successful completion relied on strong communication between numerous stakeholders, including the EKHN media house, which punkt.de worked closely with, as well as directly with the client. Developing a strong understanding of the church’s needs and challenges was integral to being able to deliver an end result that reflected its vision for the future, especially with regard to being able to appeal to younger audiences.
The new website went live on Reformation Day, an important holiday in the church’s calendar, and was met with very positive feedback from both internal and external stakeholders. The church’s new website reflects its various activities, and offers visitors the ability to understand its mission, and the important role it plays in its communities.
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