I have been a member of the South Windsor Swim Club for a number of years, and when they decided that they wanted a website to allow members an easier way to find out what was going on I was asked if I would be willing to make one since many members knew of my interest in computers. I was able to recycle some elements from a page I had been doing for myself (which got scrapped), but this was the first site where I was designing it to meet someone else’s standards instead of my own.
The primary reason for the club to get a website was to eliminate the tremendous cost of sending out newsletters to members every season by substituting paper newsletters for digital ones. I did some research, and Chris helped me find a script that I implemented as the newsletter. The second primary goal was to give members easy access to events. I found a PHP calendar script, which I added some additional functionality to. Both scripts are so easy to use that any club board members could be easily trained in them in a matter of minutes.
Since this site was primarily designed to convey information, usability was a primary concern. The light color scheme, which fits in with the club colors of green and blue, allows for easy readability, and the graphic menu provides intuitive access to all sections of the site. Once inside a particular section, a second navbar on the other side allows for futher sub-navigation without supplanting the primary menu.
The site has been a success, with most of the families belonging to the Swim Club signed up for the newsletter and hundreds of unique visits a month. The Swim Club's website can be viewed here.
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