Dom Druzhby (House of Friendship)

About the client

Dom Druzhby (House of Friendship) is a state institution of the Republic of Dagestan, subordinate to the Administration of the Head and Government of the Republic of Dagestan.

The institution fosters interethnic and interfaith dialogue, supports national cultural autonomies, preserves the languages and cultures of the peoples of Dagestan, and runs patriotic education and extremism prevention programs. It includes the Museum of Friendship of the Peoples of Russia and the National Instrument Laboratory.

Task

The institution's previous website ran on the ESGMS platform. Its license expired in July 2024, after which the site stopped being updated, and later the old address stopped working altogether.

The institution needed a website that met the requirements for state institution websites without looking like a standard bureaucratic template. In the client's words: “high-end, ultra-modern, yet formal”.

Main project goals:

01

carry over the section structure while moving away from the standard government platform template
02

let staff publish news without a programmer
03

create an online reception for citizens' inquiries
04

meet the accessibility requirement with a version for the visually impaired
05

protect personal data submitted in inquiries
06

deploy the site on the republic's government hosting

The challenge before the project

The website on the ESGMS platform had stalled: the license expired in July 2024, updates stopped, and the old address no longer served pages.

In practice, this meant:

• there was nowhere to publish news and the events calendar;

• citizens' inquiries had to be received outside the website;

• accessibility and design requirements for a government website were not being met;

• the institution was effectively left without an online presence.

News feed with a category filter - posts are published by the institution's staff through the custom admin panel

Solution

We built the website from scratch without a heavy CMS: eight pages, with news and inquiries stored in files and no database required. A site like this is easier to move between hosting providers, has no engine whose vulnerabilities attackers could exploit, and requires no license fees.

The design is official yet modern: a light theme, a green accent and a gold detail, a ribbon in the Dagestan tricolor, and a logo showing a stylized Dom Druzhby building.

Low-vision version: font size, contrast and image hiding - on every page of the site

What we did

Website and sections

• eight pages: home, about us, news, documents, gallery, events, contacts and reference information;

• an upcoming events calendar and a news feed with categories;

• separate sections for the institution's areas of work;

• the mobile version tested on every page.

Custom news admin panel

• password login, adding, editing and deleting posts;

• four categories: culture, education, sports and interethnic relations;

• photo and video uploads - as a file or a link to YouTube, VK Video or Rutube;

• protection against request forgery, no access without login.

Accessibility and inquiries

• a low-vision version on every page: three font sizes, high contrast, an option to hide images, and the mode stays on when moving between pages;

• online reception: an inquiry form with field validation and consent to data processing;

• internal files with inquiries and news are blocked from direct download - personal data is never exposed.

Launch

• meta tags, robots.txt and sitemap.xml for all pages;

• deployment on the government hosting of the Republic of Dagestan, domain domd.e-dag.ru;

• a Let’s Encrypt certificate and a forced redirect to HTTPS;

• an admin panel guide and handover of access credentials to the client.

Results

8

website sections

4

news categories in the admin panel

100%

of pages with a low-vision version

0

CMS license fees

Outcome

The website is live at domd.e-dag.ru: all sections work, news is served from the custom admin panel, and citizens' inquiries are received through the online reception.

Key project results:

• the institution is back online after the previous platform stopped working;

• staff publish news themselves, without a developer and without paying for a CMS license;

• government website requirements are met: accessibility for the visually impaired, personal data protection, HTTPS;

• the site was handed over to the client along with access credentials and a guide.