Web Site Redesign

Provides information about National Invasive Species Information Center (NISIC)'s Web site redesign and upgrades, including benefits of the redesigned site structure, and how the site content has been reorganized. We hope you find the updated site easier to use, more functional, and you can find invasive species information needed.

NISIC's Site Upgrades

• Latest version upgrade to Drupal 10 (Aug 2, 2023); previous upgrade to Drupal 9 (Apr 20, 2022).
• New look and feel, with significant enhancements to functionality (Aug 7, 2020).
• Redesigned site launched in Drupal 7 (Nov 16, 2018).

NISIC's major site upgrade initially launched in 2018 to Drupal. It had been more than 10 years since we made substantial changes and our goals were to make this site more compatible with mobile devices, improve accessibility for people with disabilities, and better tailor the content to meet your needs to find what you what quickly. Highlights of our major site changes include:

• We migrated from a static Web site to a dynamic platform using Drupal as a Content Management System.
• Site resources are tagged with species, location, and subject and resource type, allowing users to filter Resource Search using highly refined criteria.
• Our site is designed to meet the highest standards of accessibility, including those with disabilities (Section508.gov).
• Our site has a responsive web design (mobile-friendly).

It’s a Work in Progress

We have reorganized content, moved from a static site to a content management system, Drupal, which now provides added functionality to our users. Because the site structure and content have changed substantially, most of our links (URLs) have changed. To see an overview of site information, please use our Site Map.

If you have bookmarked pages from our site or have linked to our site content, you will need to update those links. We have created redirects where possible, but these redirects may be temporary. 

Since our site first launched in 2000 (initially as Invasivespecies.gov), it has grown substantially and by 2018 provided almost 20,000 unique resources, which had made the site very cumbersome and time-consuming to maintain. During this redesign, the content has been reviewed and updated, and outdated content has been removed.

We’ve worked hard to launch a site that is easier to locate information. While we launched the redesigned site initially with the information we thought was the highest priority content, we continue to add new content and update existing information to keep the information as current as possible.

NISIC's Site Content

Our initial site launch included the major content for our site – species profiles, subject-based information, geographic information, and background invasive species information. As the staff resources in NISIC are very limited (one-person), we have added more content as time permits. Relevant invasive species information is continually added to the site, see our What's New section to see recent items of interest.

Our Species Profiles provide general information about species considered to be invasive. We have changed how species information was previously organized from the categories of Animals, Aquatics, Microbes, and Plants to the habitat of species. Species information is now organized by Terrestrial and Aquatics Species (with subcategories including plants, vertebrates, invertebrates, and pathogens and diseases).

Species Profiles are carefully researched and provide scientific and common names, and relevant background information in a consistent format. Profiles also include distribution/maps/survey status, federal regulatory status, images, videos, selected highly relevant resources for the species, and citations.

NISIC provides general information about species considered to be invasive and our Information does not have any regulatory implications. There are more than 6,500 invasive species established across the United States. The large numbers of invasive species prevent us from maintaining detailed information on all invasive species. In addition, determining the invasiveness of a species depends on a number of local factors, including type of habitat. The species included on our Invasive Species Profile List are intended to be an educational resource and should not be considered to be an official list of invasive species by the U.S. Department of Agriculture or NISIC.

For consistency, our Species Profiles, Resources by Location, and Resources by Subject or Type pages all include a section for "Selected Resources" which includes highly relevant resources for that topic, organized alphabetically by title within the Source group (Council or Task Force, Federal Government, State Government, etc). Or, to display all related content, use the option to "View and Filter All species or topic Resources." This link will display pre-filtered search results for that topic (Species, Location, and Subject or Type).

Our extensive Resource Search function enables our users to filter resources based on species-related resources by either common or scientific name, and by Subject, Resource Type, Location, or Source.

Our site is based on U.S. Web Design System principles to provide an accessible, mobile-friendly government Web site. All external links (links outside InvasivespeciesInfo.gov) are identified with an icon at the end of the link to clearly distinguish external links from our site content.

Contact Us

If you are looking for specific information and are unable to locate it, please Contact Us for assistance. If you would like to provide feedback and/or suggestions of relevant invasive species information for our Web site, please let us know.