Dry Creek Community Web Site Development
Posted on | October 28, 2008 by carolyn
The Dry Creek Community home page, using ExpressionEngine, consolidated the latest news from 6 separate site sections.
Harley Oien of Dry Creek Farm was leading the Dry Creek Coalition in its efforts to fight the damage being done to the stream in this farm community by the Port Angeles dump and the Port of Port Angeles. The Coalition had hundreds of images, data and documents it wanted to post in an ongoing basis. In addition, other Dry Creek entities such as the school, the water board and the grange wanted a timely way to exchange news and information about the community. And finally, maintenance needed to be simple because there would be different non-technical administrators responsible for updating information for each of the six sections to the site. Unfortunately, initial contact with various web development firms produced cost estimates of $10,000+!
Each of the Dry Creek Community site sections needed to maintain a consistent, but different look-and-feel.
Fortunately, we could quickly develop simple templates for Expression Engine, a commercial Content Management System (CMS) software, with stock photos on hand. We created a style that distinguished each section while keeping a consistency that allowed the less web-savvy visitors to realize the sections were all apart of the Dry Creek Community web site. The desire to have the design emphasize the essential elements of a healthy eco-system — water, sun, green growth — but in an understated, traditional feel ws met with a softened yellow, green and blue color scheme. The ability to include a Photo Gallery and code an Event Calendar was a delightful surprise for the Harley Oien and the Dry Creek Community.
Dry Creek Community required a photo gallery to document conditions in their environmental and political efforts.
Another delight for the clients was the ability to create and update content without having to learn HTML or anything more technical than what each administrator already knew from creating emails. Once the administrators became comfortable with the basics of maintaining the information, we introduced web analytics to help them determine what information was most useful within the community and how the site was being accessed to help them fine tune the site’s content.
And the final delight for the clients was bringing the whole project in for under $3,000 including several hours of training and a year of support.
