Clients: Moretonhampstead
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Moretonhampstead is a small market town situated on the edge of Dartmoor, just 13 miles west of Exeter in Devon. This picturesque location makes Moretonhampstead a fantastic place to live and visit, and an ideal base from where to explore the delights of Dartmoor.
The Moretonhampstead Development Trust commissioned Sound in Theory in early 2009 to redesign and redevelop Moretonhampstead.com – the official website for the town of Moretonhampstead. As the main web presence for the town, Moretonhampstead.com serves a vital role in keeping the town’s inhabitants updated on events and services, and visitors to the site informed about Moretonhampstead.
The Moretonhampstead Development Trust realised it was time to rethink the site to help Moretonhampstead residents, organisations, businesses, children, councillors and visitors to find the information they needed efficiently. They looked to Sound in Theory to update this online presence - and make the town more enticing for potential tourists, and involving for the Moretonhampstead community. The design had to be flexible enough to support a large-scale site with a variety of pages; the content management system had to be canny enough to allow a whole community the opportunity to contribute to the site; and the whole site had to be delivered on a limited budget.
Sound in Theory realised that although the Moretonhampstead Development Trust did not have a large budget, they did have a great deal of time to dedicate to updating the site. Therefore, instead of delivering a static content website, we developed advance content management system (CMS) tools that put the power of updating the site into their hands – allowing them to produce a quality site with time, not money.
As Moretonhampstead.com would be a website for the whole town community, we implemented advance security measures into the content management system. This allows the Moretonhampstead Development Trust to spread the authoring of the website’s content, without risking the site’s security. The bespoke, comprehensive 80-page manual we created, to guide users through the Moretonhampstead admin system, will ensure that each user (no matter how limited their knowledge of the system) has a comprehensive reference to turn to, instead of needing to return to us.
The old Moretonhampstead.com was dated, and in need of a dose of vibrancy. Sound in Theory created a new design that utilised the Devon brand (www.devonbrand.co.uk) to bring freshness, simplicity and cohesion to the site’s design. Moretonhampstead.com also utilised our photography services (yes, we do that too!) – capturing a variety of striking, up-to-date images of Moretonhampstead for the website. The website’s Homepage banner displays a selection of these images to full effect.
As the website is a hub for a variety of Moretonhampstead’s life and business, including business listing, accommodation, local events, news and weather; Sound in Theory ensured the new design has a logical content hierarchy and organised structure, to keep it user-friendly and easy to navigate.
Responsibilities for Moretonhampstead