Project complete: Impact Magazine

Published on 20^th September 2008 in Websites, tagged Impact, WordPress.

I’m again pleased to announce the completion of a project, this time the redesign of the Impact Magazine website. Although I’m currently doing an industrial placement year, I’m the magazine’s Web Editor and so I’ve taken the chance to redesign the site from scratch.

The old site was created in 2006 and ran on Drupal, but wasn’t really used as anything more than an archive for articles and even then, not all of the magazine’s content was uploaded to it. I started afresh, creating the new site with WordPress as its content management system.

The main challenge was fitting all ten sections onto the front page without making it seem cluttered. I ended up with a fairly strict four column grid layout, which I think works really well. I thought a lot about adding more colour to the site, but every time I tried it, it just didn’t feel right.

Another thing I wanted to do was to make the website a great companion to the magazine. The In print page has a Google Map of where you can pick up a copy of the magazine and the home page also has prominent information boxes highlighting how people can read and get involved with Impact.

The main problem with the old site is that no-one ever used it, or when they did, it was reluctantly. To combat this, I created a guide which outlines exactly how to use the site. When I went up to Nottingham to help design the first issue, I had the chance to watch other editors use the WordPress system and so this ad-hoc usability testing really helped when it came to writing the guide. I probably wouldn’t have spotted some of the problems people were having without watching them use it.

Although the new site has only been online for a matter of days, the feedback has already been very positive and I hope that it’ll continue to be a success throughout the year. If you get a chance, do have a look around.