German-speaking Switzerland united in the Vpod portal
Just in time for May 1, the Association of Public Service Employees (Vpod) launched its new website. The union’s portal brings together all of its German-speaking sections under one roof and was developed by the web agency Update.
The "International Day of Struggle of the Working Class" is truly the right date for a trade union website to go live. The Swiss Association of Public Service Employees seized the opportunity: on the Friday before May 1, the Vpod's new German-language website went online, along with the new websites of all German-speaking sections.
The aim of the new Vpod website was a "concentration of forces". Previously, some Vpod sections operated their own websites, while others were content with subpages on the union's national website. With the conception of the Vpod site as a portal, the regional and branch associations now have independent subsites under the umbrella of the national organization, can design their own web presences and still benefit from portal-wide functions such as news, calendar with registration forms or online petitions. There is also the option of integrating "global content" from the national organization into the regional sites, which reduces the maintenance effort for central information sections such as the "Service for members" or the "Votes and slogans" pages, as well as facilitating the transfer of national content and campaigns.
The Vpod portal was designed and implemented by the Zurich-based internet and media agency Update on the basis of the association solution "Verbands.net", an agency-owned further development of the content management framework "Processwire" with ready-made solutions and structures for clubs, associations and foundations. Thanks to "responsive design" techniques, the page content is compiled according to the size of the displaying screen. This means that the pages of the new Vpod portal can be used optimally on smartphones, tablets, PCs and televisions.
Responsible at the Vpod: Tanja Lantz, Natascha Wey, Georg Christen. Responsible at Update: Hans Ott, Markus Koch (project management); Markus Hasler (design); Markus Koch, Philipp Urlich (technology).
