Cyber Media

National Forest Company

How we’ve been helping the National Forest grow and expand their web presence for 6 years and counting

http://www.nationalforest.org

Introduction

The National Forest Company was established in April 1995 and is responsible, through partnership working, for the delivery of the Government approved National Forest Strategy. It is one of the country's boldest environmental projects, and we feel quite privileged for being a part of this effort.

The challenge

Initially the National Forest Company came to us with a requirement for a website that would be able to host all of their content, would conform to the latest web accessibility guidelines, and would be flexible and expandable so as to accommodate further additions in the future. They had ambitious goals for their site and wanted a company that would support them in the long run and would help them grow and expand.

The solution

After a thorough evaluation of the National Forest’s requirements and expansion plans we concluded that the best solution was to build a custom administration facility for the site. Open source content management systems were in their infancy at the time with many teething issues, and no proprietary CMS offered the functionality, flexibility and accessibility conformance required for a reasonable price. 

Building the back end from scratch allowed us to tailor its functionality to the National Forest’s specific needs. The system allows National Forest staff to edit content, manage their directory listings, add news, manage their online store, and generally administer the site and keep it up to date. It has proven so robust and flexible that it will soon be entering the 7th year of service. Throughout this time we have updated and expanded the facility in line with National Forest’s needs.

The next challenge was developing the front end. The National Forest had a lot of content in various formats, and various target audiences with quite diverse needs and interests. It was, therefore, no mean feat by any measure to organise and display all this content in an accessible and logical way that would make sense to every user and allow them to swiftly find relevant information without getting lost.

To ensure that the needs of all target audiences were met we conducted a wireframing exercise to explore various user paths and ways for users to interact with the site. This allowed us to go through several variations of a layout before finalising the design, incorporating feedback from test users.

Accessibility has been a major concern from the very beginning. The site has been designed to, as far as possible, ensure that it operates across multiple platforms and browsers and is accessible to anyone who wants to use it. Content is handled and displayed in a way that is friendly to screen readers and text only browsers, and accessibility aids such as access keys are supported.

Having built the first website, our collaboration with the National Forest went into the next gear. The site, along with the forest itself, keeps growing by the day. To accommodate changes and new requirements we are in constant communication with the National Forest, and have established an annual brainstorming session where we explore, discuss and plan major changes, updates and additions to the site.

The outcome

We have worked with the National Forest Company for over 6 years. We are now in the third iteration of the National Forest website and swiftly moving forward. During this period the National Forest has grown from 2.3 million to more than 8 million trees, and the website from a few hundred to over a thousand pages. They both have a lot of growth in them yet, and we look forward to supporting them in their expansion.