Designing and delivering a future-ready Drupal platform for one of Sydney’s largest councils

Designing and delivering a future-ready Drupal platform for one of Sydney’s largest councils

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What we did:
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Design brief

Inner West Council serves one of Sydney’s most diverse communities. As part of its broader Digital Experience Platform roadmap, Council sought to rebuild its website — not simply to modernise the interface, but to establish a scalable and sustainable digital foundation.

Digital Garden was initially engaged to lead discovery, information architecture and UX/UI design. Following the success of that research-led phase, we were awarded the development tender to deliver the full Drupal implementation.

The result is a platform designed for long-term governance, accessibility and integration.

The challenge

The challenge

The existing site had grown into a large and complex digital estate within a legacy CMS. Navigation reflected internal structures rather than user needs, and content governance required strengthening.

Council needed to validate a new information architecture before build, migrate thousands of pages and documents, meet WCAG 2.2 AA standards, and implement secure, enterprise-ready infrastructure — all while maintaining continuity for a high-traffic public platform.

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What we delivered

What we delivered

Validated information architecture

Through stakeholder workshops and tree testing, we restructured the site around real community tasks, ensuring alignment with user mental models before development commenced.

Scalable, accessible design system

We created a component-based system aligned to Council’s brand and accessibility standards, enabling consistent publishing across large editorial teams.

Drupal 10 rebuild

The site was rebuilt on Drupal and hosted on Upsun, with structured content models, editorial workflows, analytics integration and SEO-preserving redirects. Accessibility was embedded throughout, aligned to WCAG 2.2 AA.

Migration as transformation

Migration was treated as an opportunity to strengthen metadata, structure and maintainability — transitioning thousands of assets into a cleaner, more sustainable model.

Service tools & integrations

Service tools & integrations

Location-aware event discovery

Integrated browser geolocation with suburb selection to automatically surface events happening near the user, making it faster to find relevant local activities and increasing engagement with community listings.

Bin collection & address lookup

We implemented an address-based lookup tool enabling residents to quickly identify bin collection days and service information. The tool integrates with Council data sources and simplifies what was previously a multi-step information process into a single, task-focused interaction.

Verge mowing lookup

The Verge Mowing tool allows residents to search their address and view scheduled mowing dates. Built for clarity and mobile use, the tool reduces service enquiries and provides transparent access to operational schedules.

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Outcome

Thank you and your team so much for all the work you have done, incredibly happy with the look and feel of it. Such a massive improvement from our current site and will really set us up for the future.

Maxx Dunn - Customer Experience

Inner West Council now operates on a secure, scalable Drupal platform built for long-term evolution.

The redesigned site delivers clearer navigation, a modern accessible experience, and stronger editorial governance. SEO equity was preserved, and the platform is positioned to support future integrations and service expansion.

By leading both strategy and implementation, Digital Garden ensured the final solution remained aligned with research and Council’s broader digital ambitions.

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