American Institute of Architecture Students

The American Institute of Architecture Students (AIAS) is an independent, nonprofit, student-run organization dedicated to providing unmatched progressive programs, information and resources on issues critical to architecture and the experience of education.

The AIAS website had been created in-house from a purchased template, and several employees had subsequently worked on it. There were hundreds of plugins installed, and the website frequently crashed or had loading issues. There were also functionality restrictions that were holding them back from creating the best experience possible for their members, and from attracting more new members and chapters.

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The Solution

The first thing we did with AIAS was to completely map out how they wanted their new website to work. There are hundreds of chapters, all over the world, and tons of different events, promotions, competitions and more, all going on at the same time. The previous sitemap was confusing and difficult to use. AIAS needed a site that was streamlined, straightforward to update, and could be easily modified to reflect their most current information.

As the website is geared towards students, we wanted a modern design and a colorful palate. All of the organization’s news can be assigned a custom color, allowing them to create a striking collage of news and updates. Chapters can now be identified through an interactive map, by Quad or through a list of schools. Information can be tagged to different schools, areas and more through a taxonomy system that makes updating the site a breeze. They can turn events on and off, add galleries of images, upload new resources, add crew members, upload podcasts and more.

By creating a site that is well coded and doesn’t rely on tons of plugins, as well as installing the website on an appropriate hosting platform for the size and traffic of the site, the site performs consistently and loads quickly. The new, fresh design is a better reflection of the culture at AIAS, and the site is mobile responsive, which allows their younger demographic to easily stay up to date.