Our Work

Services Provided

The Regional District of the East Kootenays (RDEK) is a municipality in British Columbia that includes Cranbrook, Kimberley, Fernie, Invermere, and Sparwood. Their site provides valuable updates on emergency information, upcoming committee and board meetings, local news, services and bylaws for the region.

As a local government, it’s essential that their website is kept up to date and functions correctly. They needed a reliable developer who could resolve issues in a timely manner, and Hop Studios was ready to assist them with their website needs.

A client since 2018, Hop Studios has assisted with some significant updates to the RDEK website, including an ExpressionEngine upgrade, a site reskin, and implementing a recycling tool. One of RDEK’s primary goals was to ensure their website was easy to use and navigate—especially for residents in rural areas where slower internet speeds can be a challenge. Keeping page sizes small to support quick load times was essential to ensuring accessibility for everyone.

As ExpressionEngine specialists, we take pride in helping our clients stay up to date with the latest versions. The RDEK site was initially built in 2011 and was on v2 at the time. We performed two EE upgrades for RDEK. Our first upgrade of the site was to v4 and subsequently, we upgraded the site to EE v6. The upgrade included a PHP upgrade and updating add-ons such as WYGWAM, Structure, Tag, Playa, and SuperSearch. We also removed outdated and unnecessary add-ons to ensure the site was functioning optimally.

In 2023, we had the pleasure of giving the RDEK website a refreshed look with a full site reskin. The goal was to improve navigation and overall usability while introducing a clean, modern design. The reskin involved a range of updates, including a redesigned homepage, improved megamenu, new department and interior page layouts, and updated sidebar navigation. We also enhanced the alert system—introducing a colour-coded hierarchy, with accessible colour choices and prominent popups that appear at the top of the site, making them easier to read for users with low vision.

A standout feature of our work on the site was the development of a custom recycling tool. RDEK wanted a solution that would allow users to search for how to recycle specific items and locate relevant recycling depots. Using the Hop Introvert add-on, we implemented a search system that surfaces related recycling result entries—and this answers the initial search query more completely. We created specific EE channels and fields for recycling depots and objects, and included alternative names for search matching. Residents can quickly find out what can actually be recycled and where to take each type of item.

Several smaller improvements were made, including adjustments to the mobile site menu to ensure all content displayed correctly, fixing email links, enabling bulleted list formatting on the homepage, and adding a more prominent link to the “Emergency Information Page”. Finally, we provided the RDEK team with training on how to make updates in the ExpressionEngine backend. We always aim to empower our clients to make and manage their own updates where possible.

RDEK serves a wide and diverse region, and we’re proud to support them in keeping their website accessible, up-to-date, and user-friendly. We look forward to continuing to help them with their website maintenance.