web 2.0 | Face Time Marketing

A New Website is Live Today

Posted by Joe Walters at 2:07 pm Marketing, Website Design

Jan 082010

After about two months of strategy and development, we pushed the Music and Arts Partners website live today. I am particularly proud of this accomplishment, as I believe so strongly in the value of MAP that I have taken the role of Publicity Director on the MAP Board.

Music and Arts Partners provides money through memberships and grants into the music and arts programs in the West Linn Wilsonville School District. As a parent of children with an interest and aptitude for music and art, I wanted to provide whatever support I can to these programs in their schools.

As a case study, the development of the Music and Arts Partners website is consistent with many projects we encounter at Face Time these days. The MAP website was a few years old and in need of a major update.

With a new logo completed, we were asked to create a website consistent with the new brand. Our experience with social media and web 2.0 interactivity drove our efforts – we wanted the new site to tell a compelling story and provide value for its visitors. We also wanted to ensure that whatever we created would be easy for MAP to update and maintain.

The new MAP website was developed in WordPress (now 2.9.1), using a theme called Suffusion which provides much of its customization options through the administrative interface. I know this bloats the code, but I didn’t want to stick MAP with a site that only I (or someone else with PHP knowledge) could update or fix. Suffusion also offers some great built-in features including Google Analytics integration, Twitter integration, robust page navigation options, and SEO features.

We added several interactive features using WordPress plugins including an Events Calendar (events manager), online Grant Request Form (cforms), file downloads (wp-downloadmanager), enhanced user roles to support the board, representatives, and faculty (role manager), and a great plug-in to automatically generate a site map for display on the site (html sitemap). We ran into minimal compatibility issues, which were quickly and easily resolved.

The site is now live. We’ll be updating it and adding new features as our community grows. Please go take a look and let us know what you think!

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