The Liberty Trail
Contributor · Full-Stack
Contributed as Full-Stack Developer on the Interactive Knowledge team for American Battlefield Trust
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A large scale Drupal platform created for the American Battlefield Trust to help visitors explore Revolutionary War history across multiple states. The Liberty Trail site provides interactive maps, travel itineraries, audio tours, state specific landing pages, and educational content. The project combines custom API integrations with flexible editorial tools, allowing the Trust to publish trail sites, historical biographies, tour content, and travel guides in a consistent and engaging way.
The American Battlefield Trust preserves and interprets historic battlefields across the country. The Liberty Trail initiative highlights Revolutionary War history and helps visitors plan trips, explore key sites, and learn about important events and people. The website acts as both a historical resource and a tourism tool, serving travelers, educators, students, and heritage organizations.
The Liberty Trail website was built by the Interactive Knowledge team as a fully custom Drupal 11 implementation. The platform supports content sourced from multiple APIs, including the Trust’s battlefields.org data, National Park Service endpoints, and custom feeds for biographies and events. The theme follows a strong visual identity with historical map textures, state badges, and interactive elements that help visitors explore history across the east coast.
I contributed to development and support across several parts of the project, including:
My work helped improve both the user facing design and the editorial experience for staff who create and manage content.
External data consistency
API content from battlefields.org and NPS varies in format. I contributed to debugging issues in the libertytrail_core module where incoming data needed sanitation, mapping, or fallback logic before being displayed.
Map interaction patterns
Pages with maps required consistent marker behavior, filters, and loading states. I refined front end logic and SCSS for stable map layouts across screen sizes.
Page specific styling complexity
The site has many page types with unique layouts including trail sites, tours, biographies, and itineraries. I handled SCSS organization and template updates that kept the theme consistent and manageable.
Accessibility across custom components
Interactive elements like carousels, accordions, and tab systems required accessible markup. I updated attributes, roles, and focus behavior to support assistive technologies.
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