The Estuarine & Coastal Sciences Association is an international organisation dedicated to  the promotion and advancement of multidisciplinary research into all aspects of estuaries  and coasts, and the application of science and technology for their sustainable  environmental management.

This website was originally built with Drupal 7 in 2016 and was upgraded to Backdrop CMS in early 2024. It provides information for a public audience and for members of the organisation, with a secure member-only area with content provided for ECSA members.

As well as providing details about the ECSA organisation and its activities, the website gives access to PDF copies of documents such as newsletters and bulletins.

It provides details of events organised by and for members, including international conferences, regional meetings and  webinars. In-person events have location information and these locations are displayed on a global map using geolocation data. Recordings of past webinars are provided from the list of events.

Membership of the organisation is available by subscription to the science and technology community and the membership subscription fees are collected via the website, using the Ubercart ecommerce module. In Drupal 7 this was enabled with Drupal Commerce but this process was converted to Ubercart to work with Backdrop.

Bulk emailing of members (users) is achieved with the Simplenews module. This differs from the Drupal 7 site, where the Mailchimp integration module was used. At the time of the development, the Mailchimp module wasn't fully functional but using the Simplenews module has made the emailing of users a little more straightforward.

 The theme is a subtheme of Bootstrap 5 Lite.

Why was Backdrop chosen for this project? 

Drupal 7 had been a good fit for the needs of the ECSA organisation, with budget a keen concern. While an upgrade to modern Drupal was considered, the higher complexity and consequent cost was a deterrent and so Backdrop CMS was a better fit. 

The final result had an excellent outcome, with the client being delighted with the resulting website.