Band Relaunches Website
by Trevor Johnston
Drogheda Brass Band relaunched its website today, 29th June 2004. The new site sports a clean, simple, design to assist visitors in navigating towards their intended information, be it the latest news, our concert programme or simply a photograph of the band.
Underneath the attractive modern exterior lies a similarly modern architecture that facilitates browsing the site on both new and old web browsers, portable devices (e.g. mobile phones) and even aural browsers. The goal? Accessibility.
The new design: clean, simple and accessible.
Much of the content from the sites previous life has been retained. Apart from the popular download section, existing news articles from past years remain valuable both as an indication of the band's progress in the last six years and as a time-line of the band's activities.
What's Changed?
It looks totally different on the outside, but underneath the hood it's also totally new.
Content has been restructured to allow quick and obvious access to those areas which have proved most popular with the viewing public. The site now divides neatly into just six sections: news, calendar, feature articles, articles about the band, contact information and downloads. These should satisfy the three stereo-typical users: the local surfer who wants to attend our concerts, the surfer abroad who is interested in Irish brass bands and, finally, the casual web surfer who just wants to hear an MP3 or see a video.
Behind the scenes the site is created with XHTML (the successor to HTML) and CSS (cascading style sheets). In proper modern website practise proper separation of content and layout is achieved. The XHTML pages contain no layout information: that task is left to the CSS. The practical upshot of all this clever business? For me, the layout and typography of the site can be changed at a moment's notice. More importantly this means that, for you, the site can be viewed on old, new, portable or even aural (speech) browsers. In other words, it's accessible to everybody.
History of the Site
The site itself has been operational since March 1998. Perhaps surprisingly, despite this six year history we were not the first Irish band to have an online presence. That honour falls to Dungarvan Brass Band from Waterford.
Nevertheless, it has been our aim since then then to provide a central resource detailing our activities. We began with a few news articles, a CD review and a picture of the band. A time when the web was young, we still managed to attract many visitors. Indeed, our first months online attracted an invitation from Kansas City, USA, to star in the 1999 St. Patrick's Day Parade. We had to decline that particular offer but it was a promising start for a small website.
The site as it first appeared back in 1998. Animated GIFs were still fashionable, gaudy colours still common and this site was produced on an Amiga.
As time marched on, so did this site. More and more news articles were added to chronicle our competition successes both at home and abroad. Articles (concert reviews, as well as other articles) began trickling in from other, now interested, members of the band. Correspondence from surfers increased: not only to tell us they liked the site, but those who were interested in joining. At one point we even had people pop into rehearsals who were over on holidays from the USA.
The last couple of years have been quiet for the site. From a technical perspective the previous design no longer cut the mustard. Tables-based layouts went out with the dinosaurs: but style sheets weren't even employed for the text styling. Coupled with a hectic schedule for the webmaster the site suffered.
The previous layout: attractive enough on the outside, but technically still in the stone-age which meant it was too much work to keep the site updated. Something had to be done.
The Future
Naturally, the new site hopes to continue to provide a valuable resource for those who are already interested in the band and to attract the attention of those who could be interested in the band. But now our site is restructured to accomodate our visitors better than ever before and it has the technical underpinning to adapt to changes in the future.
The best Irish brass band site once more? We certainly think so - why not email us with your opinion.