Promoting oral health and the profession of dentistry

Project Overview

The California Dental Association (CDA) is a non-profit, professional entity that serves as the voice of organized dentistry in California. Established in 1870, CDA has grown to become the single largest constituent of the American Dental Association. Together with its dedicated members, CDA advocates for ensuring optimal oral health care for the people of California. The organization provides invaluable support to dentists by offering a wide array of resources, including education, practice assistance, and advocacy efforts.

CDA was in the middle of building a new public-facing website when they engaged 10 Pound Gorilla to help provide best practice and implementation guidance and development support. With a short timeline to launch the website redesign before their annual conference, 10 Pound Gorilla went to work to code and build out the website. Working in collaboration with the CDA team, 10 Pound Gorilla helped implement structured content modules like EasyDnnNews and 2sxc to enable the CDAs extensive team of content editors to build and manage web pages and content on the site.

What we focused on

CMS & Website Customizations

With a large team of content editors making regular updates to the website, one of CDA's most significant challenges had been maintaining consistency across pages and its branding guidelines. To overcome this challenge, we leveraged the open-source 2sxc structured content module throughout the site to eliminate the ability of editors to make design decisions. As a result, the CDA team can combine pre-defined structured content blocks to quickly build new pages aligning with the organization’s branding and maintain a sense of consistency. Structured content also allows content editors of all skill levels to easily update site content without the risk of breaking the underlying source code.

CDA wanted to make its library of dentistry resources available strictly to their active members. We accomplished this using a combination of the EasyDNNnews module’s paid content feature, which limits access to registered users, and integration CDAs membership management tool via an Single Sign-on (SSO) to verify a user’s membership status. As a result, CDA can showcase its extensive collection of resources to potential users while allowing only policyholders full access.

Robust Resource Library

One key selling feature for CDA to its members is the wealth of resources, documents, publications, and educational material the organization publishes. With thousands of resources available, CDA needed an overhaul to how they dispersed their content to their end-users. A new, centralized resource library was developed, seamlessly merging several core publican pillars into a one-stop-shop resource hub. Built with multi-faceted search and filter capabilities, end-users have more control than ever to find relevant content.

Project Challenges, Successes & Lessons Learned

The greatest challenge of this project, based on when we were brought into the project, was accessibility compliance. 10 Pound Gorilla was given already approved designs for a website that needed review and modifications to maintain proper color contrast and accessibility. Working with the CDA staff, our team provided recommendations that worked well with existing design comps and provided a more accessible end product.

Utilizing the accessibility monitoring tool Monsido, CDA was able to monitor the website for accessibility issues proactively and resolve issues on an ongoing basis. Due to the size and amount of content produced by CDA, utilizing a tool like Monsido helped simplify the process of maintaining an accessible website.

On-Going Operations & Maintenance

Since completing this project, CDA has contracted 10 Pound Gorilla for ongoing development, maintenance, and consultation. 10 Pound Gorilla has developed new building blocks and modules based on new marketing strategies CDA is implementing. We regularly add new features and functionality to existing building blocks and modules to accommodate new requests. 10 Pound Gorilla helps consult the CDA information technology and marketing departments on best practices for building, maintaining, and updating their website.

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