2023 – A year in review

We’ve come a long way since 2008, when Managing Director Stella Power followed her gut and started a small Drupal agency targeting non-governmental organisations.

We took a moment in September to pause and reflect on where we are in 2023 and how we got there. We went back to where it all began. And we also took stock of the digital world, how Annertech fits into it, and how we've had to adapt to a changing sector and stay abreast of fast-moving technology. And then we celebrated 15 things that Annertech achieved over the past 15 years.

From some fantastic projects – some of which won some awards – to celebrating our birthday at the annual DrupalCon conference in France, to holding our biggest-ever in-person Annertech Day(s), these are the highlights of a very, very busy year.

We celebrated another step forward for our UK branch at the beginning of 2023 – being appointed to the Crown Commercial Service frameworks. This has allowed us to bid for projects and grow our client base in the competitive UK market. 

Drupal 10 was released at the end of 2022, so we were hard at work upgrading websites to the latest version of Drupal before Drupal 9 reached its end of life on 1 November this year.

And the other big “happenings” in the Drupal world were the recent announcement about a predictable release cycle – perfect for better planning – and that we can look forward to Drupal 11 in 2024.

New Annertech services 

As Annertech has grown, so too have our clients’ needs. We’ve added four new strings to our services bow – accessibility, security, performance and microsites.

Accessibility was the buzzword for 2023. With the increase in awareness and legislation around the internet being accessible to all people, regardless of any disabilities they may have, nobody wants a website that isn’t accessible. 

Accessibility is especially important for public sector websites in the European Union, who are mandated to ensure their websites and mobile applications are accessible to everybody, including people with disabilities. But the laws governing accessibility don’t just apply to the public sector. The European Accessibility Act (Directive 2019/882) is an EU directive to ensure that key digital technology, including websites, must be accessible. The Act is far-reaching, and drives home that the EU is serious about this – across the board.

Annertech’s Accessibility Team tackles issues on projects we have, take accessibility requests from clients, does audits on clients’ sites and reports back on how the sites are doing in terms of accessibility.

Vulnerability management

Our vulnerability management service, which launched in February, takes away the uncertainty and unknowns. Through comprehensive, understandable reporting you can see exactly how secure and robust your website is.

This allows vulnerabilities to be fixed before they become issues.

Performance

We launched a performance service at the beginning of the year. This ensures that our clients' websites run efficiently and are fast. 

Frustrated people don't hang around for a slow website to finish loading. They will look for what they need somewhere else. Sometimes it's an easy fix. Sometimes boosting a site's performance is a little more complicated. You won't know until you take a look.

Annertech's service offering of the LGD Microsites Platform makes creating and maintaining multiple websites easier than ever. This easy-to-use platform allows organisations to operate their entire fleet of microsites from one place, giving them oversight and control of their digital estate.

Here is some more information around microsites – frequently asked questions, the pros and cons of building a microsite for your campaign, and some extra information about what the fantastic new LGD Microsites Platform can do for you:

Other news

• Earlier this year Annertech officially became a Platform.sh Platinum Partner!! Platform.sh is one of the platforms we use to build, deploy, and host some of our websites. This platinum partnership allows us access to the "performance team" to ensure that we in turn give our clients the best services possible,

• Our Director of Development Mark Conroy and Brendan Vaughan (from the University of Limerick and a former Annertechie) were featured on Beyond the Build, a video series by the Drupal Association.

Erik Erskine spoke about whether Paragraphs is still needed with the release of CKEditor 5, while Christopher Torgalson tackled the topic of reusable and accessible JavaScript interactivity.

• And we also had articles published in the Business Post and Eolas magazine.

LocalGov Drupal 

We’re helping more councils move their websites on to LocalGov Drupal – or LGD, as it’s become known – a groundbreaking CMS for councils. 

LocalGov Drupal runs on the Drupal platform, offering an out-the-box website solution for local government websites (although anyone can use it). It was developed by councils whose goal was to reduce costs by pooling their resources, sharing the code and creating the features they need. Currently, 42 councils are running their websites on LGD. 

Annertech’s Director of Development Mark Conroy is also the lead developer on the LGD Microsites Project and was recently elected to the board of the Open Digital Collective, the co-op behind LocalGov Drupal.

DrupalCon

This year DrupalCon Europe 2023 was held in Lille, France, and Annertech was a platinum sponsor once again.

The highlight of the week we spent in Lille was that 23 of us were all in one room for our annual Annertech Day – or in this case Annertech Days, because it was held over two days, giving us a real chance to brainstorm, chat and catch up. It was brilliant to see everyone face to face. For some of us it was our first Annertech Day, and for others it was the first time we actually met in person.

Social events

But Annertech Days and DrupalCons aren’t the only times we get together. Whenever possible, we like to organise co-working days. We had one in Loughrea, in Ireland’s County Galway, in November, and another when our digital nomad and backend developer Adrien Sirjacques visited Croatia and spent a few days working with frontend developer Juanluis Lozano. 

Plus we have lots of fun online, playing games such as Dingbats (where we are given a set of pictures that represent phrases or words), and Truth or Lie – where a colleague gives a set of statements about themselves and the rest try to guess which ones are true. We’ve discovered some really interesting facts about each other.

Recognition 

Annertech won a few awards this year, and it’s lovely to see our work being acknowledged in other sectors too.  

In October, we won a Digital Media Award for our work on the National Library of Ireland website, not to mention also being shortlisted for Large Agency of the Year award. 

Image: Managing Director Stella Power at this year’s Digital Media Awards with the Best Website award.

Projects launched in 2023

It’s been a really busy year as far as projects go. These include the first LocalGov Drupal site in Ireland (Tipperary County Council), the award-winning National Library of Ireland website, plus the award-shortlisted Qualifax website all going live.

The first site to launch this year was the new Health Insurance Authority site in January, followed by the “Glanbia Connect - My Account” project  and the Tipperary County Council website.

The redesigned Activelink website went live on 22 February. 

In March, the first site on the new Paragon distro was launched, with Paragon World replacing what was Paragon CC.

The National Library of Ireland website went live in March. It’s a great place to wander around online, and the online tours are great too. So if you’re not in Dublin you can still experience this wonderful resource.

May was another busy month for the projects team:

• Promiko Tirlán Ingredients launched on 8 May, together with a Japanese language version of the project. 

• The Glanbia Nutritionals rebrand was deployed on 18 May.

• The new Global Engagement bespoke project for Griffith went live, and it looks absolutely stunning.

• The Housing Agency Defect Remediation content went live on the 25th.

• The Craughwell Furniture redesign went live on the 26th. 

The new Surrey Heath Borough Council LGD site was launched on 6 June.

Oxfam’s stunning new website launched in August.

The Actuaries Ireland redesign/reskin project launched on 6 October.  The design is lovely and the user experience is hugely improved both on desktop and mobile.

Conclusion

Phew! What a year! We’d like to thank you all for joining us on this journey. We couldn’t have achieved everything that we did without our partners, clients and colleagues. 

Next year will see a continued focus on growing the UK branch, and prioritising the accessibility and security services.

A major thank you to the Annertech team for strapping themselves to this rollercoaster with us. Without you we wouldn't have achieved any of it.