It's been a long time in the making but a few weeks ago we launched a brand new website for IH Bristol.
The previous version of our website dated back to 2016, although it's been replaced we still keep it around for reference purposes (oldwww.ihbristol.com) and its free English content. Feel free to compare the two and let us know what you think.
What's so special, then?
We, at IH Bristol, wanted to keep full control of all aspects of our website and decided to create it ourselves.
Most independent language schools will have a WordPress based website and that's fine: it's easier for their web developers. However, if you want to do advanced stuff then the technology that we've chosen - Drupal - is superior. Another bonus point is that Drupal is truly open source with a harmonious community while the WordPress community is being riven by corporate conflict.
Does a language school need advanced stuff?
Well, we've made a start with the truly advanced stuff. Take our booking forms - as an example, the form to book and English course has received a lot of attention to make the booking process as intuitively and smoothly as possible, this alone took more than 5000 lines of computer code.
It has also allowed us to take the process of taking payments online for IELTS and Cambridge exam bookings under our own control: when paying you will not get taken to somebody else's website - instead we take advantage of some clever stuff where the exchange of card details stays between you and the payment processor (our server never sees your card details) but we present everything within our own portal website.
In the near future Drupal's advanced capabilities will allow us to develop custom portals for agents, students and homestay hosts.
Open Source
We're indebted to the open source community for the work that has gone into these technologies. A special shoutout to the folks at Salsa Digital for the work they've done on the theme that we've based our website on.
We've contributed our work on a custom payment gateway back to the open source community.
The stats
So far it has taken about 1 1/2 years, 212 commits and around 46,750 lines of custom computer code to create and customise our new websites.
We hope you like them.
Marcel
(February 2025)