New site for NextGen
Friday, October 27, 2006
Update July 2007: Sadly, NextGen were unable to secure enough funding to continue their valuable work into 2007, and so the organization was forced to close. The site is no longer available. Here’s what we wrote when the site was launched:
The new site we designed for Next Generation Economy, Inc has just launched. Next Gen is an economic development group aiming to lead the implementation of the innovation-based economy in New Mexico, focusing particularly on technology and artisan clusters.
Working closely with Webb Johnson from Next Gen, we quickly developed a solid plan for the site that stressed the communication of news and events, as well as offering more in-depth resources for entrepreneurs.
The new site incorporates a blog (that select contributors can update via a simple webform - so they don’t have to log into the site’s full admin), a calendar that supports a range of views and features, and a newsletter archive.
Not your average economic development group
Next Gen have a different approach from more conservative economic development organizations, and one aim of the site was to reflect that in the design, while still making sure it is easy to use and scalable.
A bold orange navigation bar and graphically-rich section headings contribute to a clean and modern look to the finished site.
Practicalities
The site is powered using the Expression Engine content management system, making it simple to update and also taking care of RSS feeds, and the membership features needed to allow contributors to have differing levels of control as they post blog entries (some can upload images, while some can’t, for example). Trumba takes care of the advanced events caledar (but they’ve recently changed their business model to become prohibitively expensive for all but the largest organization - fortunately, we just crept in under the wire as they honor their service to existing customers, sort of).
We used CSS and XHTML for all layout and typography, A fluid design allows the pages to expand or contract to fit a range of users’ screen size and viewing preferences. The site also offers a range of accessibility features, and works well on hand-held devices such as PDAs and cellphones.
To keep costs down, Moore Consulting set up the CMS and the basic page structure, then provided training so NextGen could populate the site themselves. This shows the way a solid CMS setup can reap dividends in the original construction phase, as well as into the future.
The result
The finished site is fast to load, pleasing to the eye and easy to navigate. The Expression Engine backend makes updating straightforward, and a full-text search makes finding stories in the newsletter archives a snap.
Client: Next Generation Economy, Inc (Albuquerque)
Role: Site design and development
Features:
- Clean design with accessibility features
- Fully searchable
- Membership system to allow approved users to post blog entries
- Full-featured events calendar
- RSS feeds for events and blog entries
- Back-end content management system for site updating by client