RFQ B26085 · Website Redesign & Development · City of Dover, New Hampshire

A modern dover.nh.gov
on a platform, not a project.

Drupal — the proven open-source government CMS — on managed, SOC 2 hosting. Configured for Dover, easy for department staff to run, and built to stay accessible and secure without a standing custom-development budget. And it's already standing: you can click through it today.

Simple Spark

Josh Tate · Jay Callicott · Lee Quessenberry
(870) 530-4565 · onesimplespark.com

dover.sparkdemo.cloud →

Today's conversation

Your eight questions, in your order — with the working site alongside.

  1. 01

    Platform fit

    Why Drupal suits a city of Dover’s size — and keeps custom code small.
  2. 02

    Design, IA + UX

    Organized around what residents need to do, not the org chart.
  3. 03

    Migration + governance

    500+ pages, 3,372 PDFs, and how content stays current after launch.
  4. 04

    Accessibility

    WCAG 2.2 AA at launch, and kept there afterward.
  5. 05

    Security + reliability

    Hosting, access control, support and uptime.
  6. 06

    Integrations

    Tyler, Harris, VueWorks, WebTrac, e360, DocuPhase, Viebit…
  7. 07

    Meetings, records + modules

    RSA 91-A notice, Right-to-Know requests, alerts and notifications.
  8. 08

    Timeline + training

    Live within six months; staff confident on day one.

Who you'd work with

Creative delivery, senior Drupal, government at scale.

Portrait of Josh Tate

Josh Tate

Client & Delivery Lead — 20+ yrs brand & marketing

Founder & Creative Director, Simple Spark. Prior: SVP / Chief Marketing Officer, First Community Bank; Principal Brand Strategist, The Solutions Group; Director of Marketing & Communications, Lyon College.

On Dover: Single point of contact — stakeholder communication, design direction, training, and handoff through launch and support.

Portrait of Jay Callicott

Jay Callicott

Senior Drupal Architect — 20+ yrs enterprise Drupal & PHP

Senior Backend / AI Engineer, MMGY Global. Prior: Head of Engineering / VP Tech Ops, Mediacurrent — Lead Architect for Georgia.gov (55+ agency sites), Vanderbilt Medical Center, the NFL Clubs Platform. Certified Acquia Developer.

On Dover: Owns the platform architecture, hosting and security.

Portrait of Lee Quessenberry

Lee Quessenberry

Senior Drupal Developer — 18+ yrs content-managed web

Senior Drupal Architect, Quest Software. Prior: Drupal Developer, Esteemed Inc.; Software Engineer III (Drupal). Deep focus on content-rich, accessible (WCAG) front-ends, with a focus on document-heavy public-sector sites.

On Dover: Owns the content model, integration wiring, and the content + document migration.

One in-house team, no sub-consultants. Georgia.gov — 55+ agency sites on one accessible, content-managed Drupal platform — is the closest analog to Dover's mix of departments, boards and services.

01 · Recommended platform

Drupal: the established government CMS — sized right for Dover.

You asked for a proven, supported platform over a custom build. Drupal is that platform: open source, maintained by a global community with a dedicated Security Team, and running federal, state and municipal sites across the country — including Georgia.gov, which Jay architected.

Hundreds of pages, dozens of editors

Structured content types for departments, meetings, news, services and documents. Scales from 500 pages to 5,000 without re-platforming.

Department editors + approval

Roles, department-scoped access and a draft → review → publish workflow are standard modules — configured, not coded.

Seven domains, one site

Arena, pools, youth, wireless, Driving Dover and Locate in Dover come in as sections, with permanent redirects from the old domains.

No license, no lock-in

No per-seat or per-module fees. The City owns the code, content and data; any Drupal firm can maintain it.

01 · Minimizing custom development

Almost everything Dover needs is already built — and someone else maintains it.

The site is four layers. Only the thin top layer is ours to write — the City's look and templates. Everything beneath it is supported platform that updates through standard, security-covered releases.

  • Workflow, permissions, revisions, media, search, forms, redirects, scheduling — all supported core or contributed modules.
  • Dover’s content types and roles are configuration, exported and version-controlled — not code.
  • Upgrades are routine: Drupal 10 → 11 was an in-place update, not a rebuild.
  • Adding a department, board, service or page never needs a developer.

Ours — the thin layer

Dover design + page templates

Brand, layout and components — accessible by construction, documented in a style guide.

Simple Spark

Configuration

Dover’s content model, roles + workflow

Departments, meetings, news, services, alerts, documents; editor and approver roles.

Config, not code

Supported modules

Drupal core + contributed modules

Content Moderation, Workflows, Media, Views, Webform, Search API, Redirect, Scheduler, Workbench Access, Editoria11y, Metatag, TFA.

Drupal Security Team coverage

Managed platform

Pantheon managed hosting

Servers, CDN, backups, patching and monitoring — run by the host, not by the City or by us.

Pantheon

02 · Design + user experience

A resident's top tasks, answered above the fold.

The pilot is built from a crawl of dover.nh.gov — real departments, real services, Dover green and civic gold, and the City seal. It's a working starting point for discovery, not a final design.

  • Pay a Bill and Report a Problem in the header on every page.
  • Resident-service grid: permits, meetings, records, recreation, jobs.
  • One-click alert banner for closures and emergencies.
  • Mobile-first: the same templates at every screen size.
dover.sparkdemo.cloud →
The full Dover pilot homepage: alert banner, Welcome to Dover hero with Resident Services and Meetings buttons and an Ask Dover search, the resident-service grid, news and this week's meetings.

02 · Information architecture

Five resident-first sections — reachable by task or by department.

The crawl found 500+ pages in a deep tree with no navigation landmark. The same content is reachable from Services (by task) and Government (by department), so nobody needs to know the org chart to get help.

The Resident Services page with most-used service cards.

Services — by task

Pay, permit, report, register — each a plain-language card, tagged with the portal it opens.

The Government landing page.

Government — by department

Council, boards and every department on one consistent template.

The searchable municipal directory.

Directory — by person

A searchable staff and department directory replaces scattered contact pages.

Discovery confirms it with you: stakeholder interviews, a card sort with department webmasters, and top-task analysis from your analytics before a single template is locked.

03 · Content migration + documents

We've already inventoried your site. Migration starts from data, not guesswork.

0+
pages crawled and mapped to the new structure
0
PDFs found — each one triaged, not blindly copied
0
secondary domains consolidated with redirects
0
broken links at launch — every old URL redirects

Document triage

Keep + convert

High-traffic PDFs that are really web content (forms guides, fee schedules, how-tos) become accessible web pages.

Document triage

Keep + remediate

Documents that must stay documents are tagged, checked for accessibility, and remediated or flagged.

Document triage

Archive

Outdated items move to an archive per the RSA 33-A retention schedule, or stay in DocuPhase as the system of record.

Document triage

Retire

Duplicates and superseded files are retired, and their old URLs redirect, so nothing breaks.

Documents live in Drupal's Media Library with department, type and date metadata, so they're searchable and reusable; replacing a file updates it everywhere it's linked. Pages and documents migrate by script, and each department signs off on its own section before launch.

03 · Long-term content governance

Launch is easy. Year three is the test.

Most city sites decay because nobody owns a page and nothing tells anyone when it's stale. The governance model is built into the CMS, not kept in a binder.

Every page has an owner

Each page belongs to a department, and only that department’s editors can change it.

Nothing publishes unreviewed

Editors draft, approvers publish. Every change is a revision with who and when, and can be rolled back.

Stale content surfaces itself

A “not updated in 12 months” report per department, and scheduled unpublish dates for time-bound content.

Guardrails, not blank pages

Structured fields and a component library keep pages consistent and accessible, whoever writes them.

A written playbook

Web style guide, roles and responsibilities, and a publishing checklist, handed to Media Services.

Quarterly health check

We review accessibility, broken links, stale pages and analytics with Media Services every quarter.

04 · Accessibility

WCAG 2.2 AA at launch — and a system that keeps it there.

The DOJ's ADA Title II rule requires WCAG 2.1 AA for city websites and documents, with April 2028 as the date for a city of Dover's size. We build to 2.2 AA, which goes beyond that.

  • Build gate: automated axe-core checks run on every change. A violation blocks the release.
  • Editor gate: Editoria11y flags missing alt text, skipped headings and vague link text while staff are writing.
  • Human gate: keyboard and screen-reader testing on every template before launch.
  • Ongoing: a compliance dashboard in the CMS, re-audited continuously, and reviewed with you every quarter.
  • Documents: PDF triage and remediation are part of migration, not left for later.

500/500

current pages with no main landmark or skip link

~1,000

current form inputs with no label

0

axe violations on the pilot · 14/14 pages

The Site Compliance Dashboard: all checks passing — 0 accessibility violations on 14 of 14 pages at WCAG 2.2 AA, performance 100 desktop and 98 mobile, SEO 100.

05 · Security + hosting

Managed, audited hosting — and a CMS with a security team behind it.

Hosting

Pantheon managed cloud

SOC 2 Type II audited and TX-RAMP Level 1 certified. Global CDN, isolated containers, automated platform patching, built-in dev/test/live environments.

Platform

Drupal Security Team

Coordinated security advisories for core and covered modules. We apply them under the support plan, tested first, usually within days.

Access

MFA, roles + audit trail

Two-factor login for all staff, single sign-on through the City’s identity provider (e.g. Microsoft Entra ID) where wanted, least-privilege roles, a full revision log.

Data

The City owns it

Encrypted in transit and at rest. Nightly backups with retention, a documented data location, and a full export available at any time, including on termination.

Continuity

Built to stay up

Redundant infrastructure with an uptime SLA, CDN caching that keeps pages serving through traffic spikes, a tested restore procedure, and monthly traffic reports.

Agreement

Attachment C, signed

Vendor Cybersecurity Agreement accepted: 24-hour breach notification, encryption and audit logging. The public site holds no CJIS, HIPAA or sensitive PII.

Hosting is the City's choice, not a lock-in: the same Drupal site runs on Pantheon, on Acquia (including its FedRAMP-authorized government cloud), or in a City-managed AWS or Azure account.

05 · Support + reliability

After launch, you talk to the people who built it.

The ongoing plan covers hosting, security and core updates, accessibility monitoring and a block of content and enhancement hours. It's priced in the cost proposal.

  • 30 days of hands-on post-launch support included.
  • Security and core updates included, tested on a staging copy before going live.
  • Uptime and error monitoring with alerts to us, not to your staff.
  • Escalation path: support desk → Lee → Jay, with named people and no call center.
Proposed severity-based response times
Severity Example Response
1 · CriticalSite down, security incident, emergency alert can't publish1 hour, 24/7
2 · HighKey feature broken (meetings, forms, search)4 business hours
3 · NormalBug or editor question1 business day
4 · RequestEnhancement or new content typeScheduled with you

Proposed targets. Final SLAs are set in the cost proposal and support agreement.

06 · Integration with your systems

Keep the systems that work. Make the website the front door to all of them.

We don't rebuild Tyler or Harris. Residents get one consistent entry point, and we connect more deeply through APIs only where it clearly helps.

Tyler Enterprise Permitting

Permits + inspections

Linked portal · SSO where supported

Harris eGovern

Online payments

Pay a Bill, sitewide

VueWorks

Report a Problem

Linked portal

Vermont Systems WebTrac

Recreation registration

Linked from Recreation pages

e360

Charter + Code of Ordinances

Deep links / embed

OnPhase (DocuPhase)

Document repository

Links + API search where feasible

Viebit

Meeting video

Embedded on each meeting

Constant Contact + SMS

Email + text alerts

Signup + publish-to-notify via API

Sitewide search covers every page and document, and can extend into connected systems where they expose search. The RFP invites platform-native alternatives: forms and the alert banner are built in, and anything else we'd replace is a discussion, not a default.

07 · Meeting management

One record per meeting. The calendar, homepage and archive update themselves.

  • Council, Planning, Zoning, Conservation, School Board: every body has the same structure.
  • Agenda, packet, minutes and Viebit video attach to the meeting record.
  • Scheduled publishing: post the agenda now, and it goes public at the notice time you set (RSA 91-A).
  • A searchable archive across years, kept to the RSA 33-A retention schedule.
  • Residents can subscribe to a board and get an email when its agenda posts.
  • Already use, or plan to adopt, an agenda-management system? We pull from its feed instead of duplicating it.
Meetings & Agendas: upcoming Planning Board and City Council meetings with agenda and packet links.

07 · Public records, notifications + modules

Capabilities you turn on — not features we have to write.

Right-to-Know (RSA 91-A)

Public records requests

Light volume: a Webform request with routing to the right department, a confirmation and a five-business-day reminder, built in.

Full lifecycle (tracking, redaction, delivery, a public archive): we integrate a dedicated records platform, and the site publishes completed requests where appropriate.

Notifications

Alerts that reach people

One switch turns on the sitewide alert banner. The same publish can push to Constant Contact and your SMS service, so residents opted in by topic (road closures, trash schedule, a specific board) hear about it without staff posting three times.

Forms + services

Forms without developers

Webform lets Media Services build accessible forms (contact, applications, sign-ups, surveys) with routing, file uploads and spam protection. No code and no per-form fees.

Content ModerationWorkflowsWorkbench AccessSchedulerMedia LibraryWebformSearch APIRedirectPathautoMetatagEditoria11yTFAOpenID Connect (SSO)ViewsSmart DateDiff

Supported Drupal core and contributed modules: open source, security-covered, and maintained by the Drupal community.

For department webmasters

Editing is filling in a form. Publishing is a click by the right person.

  • Labelled fields instead of a blank page: date, board, agenda, packet, video.
  • A Planning editor sees and edits Planning content only.
  • Draft → Needs Review → Published, with notes back to the author.
  • Preview before publishing; schedule publish and unpublish dates.
  • Every revision kept and comparable, so any change can be undone.
The Drupal edit form for a City Council meeting: date and time, board, location, agenda, packet and minutes files, video link, department, a scheduled publish time three days before the meeting, and the Needs Review moderation state.

08 · Timeline + implementation

Live within six months, starting from a working site rather than a blank page.

  1. 1

    Month 1

    Discovery + IA

    Kickoff, stakeholder and webmaster interviews, content inventory against the crawl, IA and card sort, plus the domain and redirect plan.

  2. 2

    Months 2–3

    Design + CMS

    Visual design reviewed on the working site; content model, roles, workflow and department access configured on the platform.

  3. 3

    Months 3–5

    Build + migrate + connect

    Templates built; pages and documents migrated with department sign-off; Tyler, Harris, VueWorks, WebTrac, e360, Viebit, DocuPhase and notifications connected.

  4. 4

    Month 6

    Beta, train + launch

    Beta for City review, accessibility and screen-reader QA, staff training, DNS cutover, redirects live, monitored launch.

How we work with you: one point of contact (Josh), a standing weekly check-in, a shared project board the City can see, and a working staging site from week one, so feedback is on real pages and never on static comps.

08 · Training approach

Training by role, on your own content, before launch day.

Department editors

Write, update, submit

Hands-on in a training copy of the real site: edit your department page, post a meeting, add a document, submit for review.

Approvers + Media Services

Review, publish, govern

The approval queue, scheduling, alerts, forms, menus, the compliance dashboard and stale-content reports. Train-the-trainer, so Dover can onboard new staff itself.

IT

Run and own it

Hosting, access and SSO, backups and restore, the update process, and the full handoff of code, credentials and documentation.

Recorded walkthroughs for every common task, for new hires later.

One-page quick-reference cards, printable, for each role.

Office hours through the 30-day post-launch period.

Let's click through it

Draft, review, publish — live.

  1. 1 A resident looks for the next City Council meeting and its packet.
  2. 2 A Planning editor adds an upcoming meeting and submits it for review.
  3. 3 An approver reviews it, schedules it and publishes it.
  4. 4 It appears on the meetings page and in the archive, with no developer involved.
Open the pilot → Open the CMS →

Thank you

A great place to live, work, and play — online, too.

A proven platform, configured for Dover, that your staff can run and your IT team can trust, live within six months. The pilot is open to everyone on the panel: click through every page.

Simple Spark

Josh Tate · Founder & Creative Director
(870) 530-4565 · josh@onesimplespark.com · onesimplespark.com

Open the live pilot →
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