Sector(s)
Team Members
Project Team
WOAR! Ohne Angst & Reue — brand identity, UX and UI design, technical
concept, Drupal 10 development, user and permission architecture,
ongoing maintenance. In close cooperation with the youth department of
the city of Neuwied.
Visit the site
Visit the siteOrganizations Involved
Community contributions
Issue credits from client work: CKEditor Media Resize and Klaro Cookie
& Consent Management. Patches from project work are contributed back
where they are of general use.
up2date.Neuwied is the central youth portal of the city of Neuwied,
Germany. It connects leisure, education and counselling offers from
clubs, associations and public bodies across all districts of the city,
and makes them findable for young people on their phones.
The city needed more than a website: providers had to be able to
publish their own events and offers, while the administration kept
editorial control over everything that goes public. The project also
included a new brand identity — logo, colour system and UI design.
About the project
Goals
- One place where young people find every offer in their city
- Providers publish independently, the city keeps control
- Mobile first — the primary device is a phone
- GDPR-compliant accounts and login
- A youth-appropriate brand identity
Approach
Developed in close cooperation with the city administration over many
review cycles. The portal was built mobile first throughout.
The heart of the system is the roles and permissions model. Providers
register, receive a personal dashboard, and manage their profile,
events and offers there. Every submission passes an editorial approval
workflow before publication, so the city can guarantee quality and
appropriateness.
Alongside the technical build, a new brand identity was created: logo,
colour world and UI design — clear and friendly without being
childish, since the portal also has to be credible to institutions.
Caching, image optimisation and a performance-oriented front end keep
load times short even with many concurrent logins.
Outcome
- Over 200 active providers from all districts of the city
- New offers and events published daily by clubs and organisations
- Stable performance under concurrent editorial use
- Positive feedback from the city, young users and partner organisations
Why Drupal was chosen
The decisive requirement was user-generated content under editorial
control by a public authority.
Drupal's roles and permissions system, combined with content
moderation, allowed exactly the workflow the city needed: registered
providers create their own profiles, events and offers; every
submission enters an editorial approval workflow; nothing goes live
without review. Building that on a page-oriented CMS would have meant
custom development for something Drupal treats as a core concern.
Second, data protection. As a public body the city has strict GDPR
obligations for account handling. Drupal's user system and the ability
to keep everything self-hosted on German infrastructure made this
manageable and auditable.
Third, accessibility and longevity. Public sector projects in Germany
fall under BITV and the Barrierefreiheitsstärkungsgesetz, and they have
to survive changes of agency. Standard technology and full
documentation were a requirement, not a preference.
Technical Specifications
Drupal version:
Key modules/theme/distribution used:
Content Moderation and Workflows in core provide the approval process
the city required, without custom development and without a
third-party service holding public sector data.
Views with Better Exposed Filters powers both the public offer
listings and the provider dashboards — one mechanism, two audiences,
different permissions.
The provider dashboard is custom because the requirement was a single
place where a provider sees only their own content across several
entity types, in language a volunteer club member understands.
Klaro handles consent, which for a public body has to be verifiably
opt-in and revocable.
