RainU CMS Creates University Websites in Less Than 30 Days

Mediaccurrent is No Stranger to Higher Education

Before diving into specifics on the RainU story itself, we’d first like to introduce Pantheon partner agency Mediacurrent and the best-in-class Drupal solutions it offers to its clients. This Atlanta-based agency offers clients a single source for web development, design, strategy, and training — all while sticking by their side on a long-term basis to ensure their web experience is as reliable as possible and problems are solved with alacrity and speed. 

Mediacurrent has over 14 years of experience in delivering Drupal-based web solutions for higher education, including partnering with household names such as Georgia Tech, Penn State, Yale, Harvard, and Stanford, among other top-ranked institutions. 

Rapid Drupal Development, Tailored to Higher Education

RainU CMS (content management system) is Mediacurrent’s Drupal-based development platform that supports Drupal 9, purposely built for higher education institutions. Created to accelerate the web development process, RainU gets higher education institutions up and running with a full-fledged website in less than 30 days! 

We saw a need for a solution that accelerated the web development process for Drupal projects, and initially developed Rain. As our higher ed clientele keeps growing, we saw an opportunity to create a platform made just for higher education and launched RainU this year.

- Jay Calicott, Mediacurrent VP of Operations and Lead Architect of RainU

How is this possible, you might ask? Well, Mediacurrent has created RainU with pre-built features of value, flexible workflows, editorial control and ease of use for content creators, plus customizable components with the university’s built-in style guide — all required to design, edit, and publish content to an impressive, on-brand website both quickly and easily. And for those higher education web teams that need a bit more customization, Mediacurrent is happy to help with additional enhancements and tailored web solutions. 

Simply put, RainU is a brilliant way to create a higher education site in a quick, seamless fashion, without requiring tons of overhead thrown at it. It’s ideal for smaller university web teams creating a website from scratch in a limited time period, plus it’s great for larger institutions looking for a convenient launching point towards creating a more powerful, customized Drupal-based website. 

Component-based RainU Theme 

RainU supports marketers and content editors with a flexible authoring experience while further saving time and simplifying processes for IT teams.

- Jay on the value RainU offers to higher education teams

The driving catalyst for RainU was to make the content creation, editing, and publishing process as seamless as possible for university web teams — all without sacrificing functionality or the university’s personalized brand and unique sense of style. 

RainU gives university web teams a library of pre-stocked “components,” which are commonly referred to as paragraphs in Drupal, to facilitate web teams moving rapidly to create, edit, and publish content, often under a limited timeline. 

High-Value Features Out of the Box

Not only does RainU get a university’s website up and running in a quick and seamless manner without sacrificing branding guidelines or the user experience (UX), it offers a number of high-value features straight from the box. Check them out below.  

API-ready

Allows you to quickly and easily syndicate content from RainU to other platforms, as necessary. 

Robust Security

Built-in security features prevent hackers from exploiting vulnerabilities and accessing sensitive information. 

UX Optimized

Mediacurrent has optimized the UX of RainU with better color contrast, plus an intuitive interface for content editors and administrators alike. 

Multisite+

Makes creating new site instances quicker and easier than ever with a shared codebase, but with each site retaining its own database, configuration, files, and base domain or URL. 

Automated Updates

Takes the hassle and extra labor out of initiating pull requests, creating JIRA issues, and staging updates within Pantheon’s Multidev environment. 

Service Desk

There for you when you need it, Mediacurrent’s Service Desk supports you when you need to make changes to the website and improvements over time. 

Unrivaled Uptime and Seamless Scaling, Courtesy of Pantheon

Because RainU is a Drupal-based hosted on the Pantheon SaaS platform, higher education institutions reap the benefits of unrivaled uptime (99.99% SLA) and seamless scaling as their site grows, both of which are essential when a site is inundated with heavy traffic during busy times of the year, plus a global content delivery network (CDN) that ensures sub-second pageloads from virtually all corners of the planet. 

Site reliability is an understatement, thanks to Mediacurrent’s partnership with Pantheon. 

Optimize the Digital Experience with Siteimprove

Since Mediacurrent partners with Siteimprove, you’ll reap the benefits of improved search engine optimization (SEO) and site accessibility, as well as a host of data-rich marketing insights to help you maximize ROI and growth. 

Discover More on RainU

Interested in learning more about what RainU has to offer for your university’s web team and how it can get you up and running with a website in less than 30 days? Check out the following RainU landing page and check out this webinar (RainU starts around the 30-minute mark) for more information.