The Stokes Valley Volunteer Fire
Brigade has recently launched a new and impressive web site. You can view it at www.stokesvalleyfire.org.nz/.Our boys have had a site online for a while and it has been linked to previously under the Links section of the Stokes Valley News Online web site, however, they have been wanting to upgrade for some time. The real motivation for a new site came when after seeing what other brigades in New Zealand have been able to achieve recently. The Stokes Valley Volunteer Fire Brigade wanted to be right up there with the best of them.
Chief designer Mike Vaney says, "It was very much a case of making it up on the run and learning how to do things as we went along. A major hurdle to overcome was finalising a specific design. Many hours were spent experimenting with different graphics, fonts, colours, and layouts. Although we had a stack of material ready to build the site with, we couldn't progress until we nailed down the basic framework."
From the outset, the brigade wanted to have an Internet address that was distinctly their own, and easy to remember. Organising their own domain meant that they could avoid free hosting sites with their associated design restrictions and annoying "pop-up" advertising.
The brigade have been able to secure a sponsorship deal with Digiweb New Zealand Limited (a Web hosting company based in Christchurch) who's technical expertise really helped with solving the few problems that arose during the development of the site.
The old site consisted of just one, extremely long Web page, which
held the entire contents of their magazine 50 Flaming Years. The new site is much
superior in that it is now a well organised collection of smaller pages meaning less
scrolling and greater ease of navigation for visitors. On the new site, for example, 50
Flaming Years is split into multiple pages that are all well-indexed.Well, the new site has been solely a Stokes Valley brigade initiative. "We'd like to raise public awareness of what volunteer brigades do for the community, says Vaney. "We'd also like to promote Fire Safety throughout the Stokes Valley Fire District (for example, by showing how easy it is to have smoke alarms installed)."
New content will be added to the site on a regular basis (as time permits), and there are still a number of sections and pages not yet added. It is expected that the site will be updated soon with many more photos (selection for inclusion is still going on) as an overlooked large box of scrapbooks, newspaper articles, and photographs going back many years was found just a couple of days before the new site went live.
Development of the site took about six months (planning started in late Jan/early February of this year). It is comprised of approximately 450 individual Web pages, 150 photographs, and 330 other graphics files.