Role: Project Lead, Manager, Webmaster.Like many website projects, United Way's site started out life as a 'web presence' brochure-ware type site -- a site that could easily be visualized as a print pamphlet.
Over time, as web technologies evolved, new features and content areas were bolted-on to the existing site, giving little thought to the overall user experience or overall strategic vision of the organization.
The first image illustrates the website at that stage. No focus, no overarching strategy, just a very large drop-down menu of options, all equally weighted with no strategic support of the overall organization's objectives. Each item is as important as every other item; hence nothing is important. This is obviously not the best way to implement a website that supports a business strategy.
Meetings were called, objectives discussed and prioritized, and technologies explored.
The end result is this; a content management system called Mambo, running on a Linux based server utilizing an Apache webserver, MySQL database and the PHP programming language.
We did not start from scratch; we used templates and pre-existing packages where possible. Time was of the essence and any efficiency we could take, we did.
End result? We're meeting our objectives; content is updated on a timely basis; content is deliberately focused toward a strategic end, more people have the ability to create and edit content, and we have a much more flexible site.
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