Our New Website

[pritchardavid]

Any suggestions would be great if you can think of anything to improve our new website. It's not live at the moment, it redirects to the current one at the sec

 

As you may guess, both are made on Wordpress

 

Current Site

New Site

 

 

There are parts that needs to be finish and there are extra stuff I can add, this I would say can wait, I think the site is good enough to live now, but I need for this to have the go head, so while waiting, I will try and add and finish stuff off.

 

------------------------Plugin wise------------------------

- Youtube Video Gallery Plugin

- Picture Gallery Plugin

- Contact Us Form

- MP3 player plugin

- Friendly print?

- PDF button on each post and page plugin (if any one wants a copy of the page of post in PDF)

- Open/Close Plugin for example snow days (cant seem to find a plugin for this yet)

- e-commerce plugin if doing the school shop

- Canteen menu plugin ? (Easier than using a table)

- Activity menu plugin ? (Easier than using a table)

- Fixtures/results/table plugin for PE? (Easier than using a table)

- Lost property plugin?

 

 

------------------------Information Needed------------------------

 

- Each department to have there on page in curriculum page (Need them to write stuff out and a few pictures)

 

- Get someone to write out information for eco-schools page

- Get someone to write out information for exams page

- Get someone to write out information for careers page

- Get someone to write out information for e-safety

- Get someone to write out information for Teaching Schools page

- Get someone to write out information for Studio Schools page

- Get more enrichment pages (outside class) (Need someone to write information out)

- Canteen page with pictures and information and menu (Need someone to write information out)

- Lost Property page

 

------------------------Ideas------------------------

- School shop? Ideal so parents could like pay for school trips, ties, badges, etc?

- Need to look at other school sites, see what we are missing on ours, or see if they have done any thing better that we can do on ours

- Covert policies (they are pdfs) so that a policies has its own page and also using page/post pdf plugin? think it will make it look more professional

- Department micro websites?

- Forum?

 

Need help.....

 

If anyone is good at graphics, I know there is a few here, can anyone make a better footer for our logos, it doesnt look very nice at the momment, maybe also it might be better with just one or two colours like that at this school site http://www.gablehall.com/

 

Many thanks

Edited October 23, 2011 by pritchardavid

[JonTorbitt]

I'd think about making the slideshow clickable with some sort of strap line to explain each image - always helps to cover all bases.

 

The videos hosted on YouTube are a good idea - we do something similar with ManyBadgers.com (in dire need of an update i admit!) but YouTube is blocked for pupils in our school and many in other schools in the East of England via E2BN and has been for a long time - maybe consider co-hosting on Vimeo? Gets through most filters or you can put an local exception in if you use net filtering?

 

THe site is nice and clean and it's a good idea to update it in small steps. Am helping to review ours at the minute and it takes a long time to get some things approved and the inevitable extra responsibility and approval chain for teaching staff to write effective web content (a huge generalisation i know).

 

You could use e-commerce plugins for wordpress on a subdomain to run the school shop perhaps? THe human process of managing orders and payments behind it needs to be pretty tight though!

 

I like the snow plugin - had same idea myself and is relatively easily done too with a simply on/off setting - always useful!

[speckytecky]

A beaut - your old site is no disgrace either! Someone has worked hard on all of it. Love the video clip, a real celebration of success, what did / do you use to do it and what's the position on license for use of the soundtrack?

[pritchardavid]

Many thanks specky!

 

My line manager made the video using just using windows live movie maker, we are going to try using the apple move program next time (cant remember what its called at the momment)

 

Soundtrack licence im gussing is fine because its running from youtube which has a advert

[FN-GM]

Its really slow for me, not sure if its because i am in Australia or that its just generally slow.

[gshaw]

Nice clean design, like it

 

One little thing that's more personal taste - I've never been a fan of capitals in the menu bar, gives that "shouting" feeling but might just be me