I asked ‘Would you like me to make some changes to the current Work o’ the Weavers site or would you like me to port the site over to a Dashboard-enabled software so as to make it more easily updated by you?’ The answer was: ‘We want to be able to update it ourselves whenever we want!’
In case you don’t know, the Weavers are icons in the history of Folk music and political activism. Check out the story (thanks wikipedia!).
Work o’ the Weavers is a tribute group, a multi-media event and part of the community in which the original Weavers thrived. The group is led by James Durst, who has had a long career as a globe-trotting troubadour. Members of the original Weavers join the group on occasion.
With the blessing and generous donation of time and existing site assets from their previous site designer, Starstruck Design, we were able to hit the ground running on this project.
We created a new account on our reliable, industry standard, Cpanel reseller hosting. (We are not fans of odd, proprietary website control panels)
We adapted an open-source template, integrating an in-progress design concept from Starstruck, while making allowances for the global nature of the site design.
We ported over text content and some graphic assets from the existing website.
We blocked out what was a page and what would be a news-type item on the new site.
We found suitable plugins to power the music player function on the site.
We created a nice Flash photo montage for the home page.
We provided Dashboard instruction via phone and at our favorite internet cafe Uncommon Grounds, in beautiful downtown Great Barrington.
We also gave James the option of using 2 plugins for ecommerce and performance listings on the site. He elected to stick with his current off-site 3rd party services for these functions, for now. It IS a lot of work to partner with your web developer!
The site is already getting some nice comments, and since they appear right on the site pages, we believe search engines will like the site, too.