Content elements and pages for a utility's Neos 9 relaunch

The utility’s new website existed as a design, while most of its blocks and pages did not exist yet in the CMS. The agency owned the Neos 9 setup, the base elements and the deploys. My job was new elements and pages inside that setup, with one rule: extend what exists before adding anything new.

I set the project up locally with the agency’s database, so I built and checked every change before the push. I extended the existing elements instead of copying them. The text element got an image collage and a button, the page header a two column mode, and the gallery a carousel mode. Two card designs became one element.

What the design asked for

I built service cards with a fee calculator, a job list grouped by department that opens without JavaScript, a carousel of quotes and numbered process tabs. The docs referred to a slider module that did not exist yet, so I wrote it, with arrows, dots, keyboard, swipe and screen reader labels.

I added a content hash to each asset’s address, so browsers load fresh CSS after deploys. I also fixed a submenu running off the screen, sideways scroll on phones and a menu on news pages. Then I wrote commands that build a page from data in the design’s order, locally and on the test server.

I built the home page, the careers page and an information page, and checked every block on phone, tablet and desktop. Everything went to review on the test server, and on the day I handed them over the three pages there matched the local build section by section.