Home > Website redevelopment
Website redevelopment
You're looking at the result of phase 1 of the website redevelopment. Read on to find out what we did and why.
Remember the old site?
Well it was cute and it did the job, but it had lots of problems. The frames-based navigation meant that sometimes, users landing on a page from a search engine listing might not be able to go anywhere else on the site. And it wasn't very friendly to users of screen-readers, and the structure wasn't very flexible in terms of adding more content or retaining archives. So, we thought it was time to give it a fresh look...
Phase 1 - complete
Hopefully, we have kept the features that you liked from the original site, but we've made the following improvements.
- Implemented official Making Music branding, including the new logo and colour palette
- Improved usability through clearer navigation, ability to add pages at deeper levels, use of a crumbtrail so you can see where you are in the structure
- Improved accessibility through separating code from presentation, which makes it quicker for users of screenreaders. You can also increase or decrease font size
- Improved 'Find a Music Group' functionality so you can filter by borough, group type and keywords
- Individual group listings now run from a database, making it easier to update the format of these pages.
- Added a chatroom so you talk to each other as well as talk to us
- Implemented Google search
- Optimised pages for search engines
- Improved bookmarking so you can send individual page links to your friends
Phase 2 - in discussion
- Forum
- 'Players and Singers list' - a revamped amateur fixers list
- Create sign-up feature for London Harmony
- Any ideas welcome
Tell us what you think
Do you like the new site? Is there anything you'd like to see? Maybe you'd like to be involved in user testing? If so, please contact us
