by Dejen Tesfagiorgis
After a weekend of browsing websites and staying on top of our news, we came across the new website of the Interlochen Center for the Arts in Interlochen, Michigan. But thanks to the internet, you do not have to go to Michigan to see their website, you can browse through your computer at home.
The thing that most impresses me about this website is Interlochen’s knowledge of its target market – young artists who have grown up with a high expectation of websites, technological integration, embedding, and feeling welcome through a website. There was nothing wrong with their old website, but this new one totally blows me away. Amongst other things, their new website features:
- AddThis Content sharing links on each news article – Helps readers share Interlochen news with friends on social networks
- Links to view the site in Spanish, German, French, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean (Big Props on this!)
- News tags to aid navigation between related topics on the site
- Embedded videos that visually demonstrate news and the mission of the organization
- A Camera that allows you to View the campus live - Prospective students and parents can virtually tour the campus. This feature is a nice to have, but a great introduction to the environment
A few Suggestions
- RSS Feeds – People who use RSS want your news immediately. An RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed would help get your news to the people, instead of the people coming to your website for news
- Blog – Well at a big organization, who maintains the Blog? Here we can see that “Megan” has done some contributing, but other than that nothing. People want to know everything about you.
The color scheme has a bit of a Twitter homepage vibe, but there is greater color contrast and visual organization on the new website. Fantastic work, A.
Arts schools and orchestras, Take notes.
Hi Dejen – Thanks for the nice review of our website! It’s built on Drupal 6, which has worked fantastically for us. It’s funny you mentioned the RSS feeds, because I just set up two today, for News and Events: http://www.interlochen.org/feeds/news/rss.xml, http://www.interlochen.org/feeds/events/rss.xml. Blogs to come in a couple of months. Cheers, Megan
Hi, would you mind pointing me towards the them and modules used by this site? Greatly appreciated!
Regards
Dan
Built on wordpress, we use the Digg 3 column theme, and the plug-ins for Twitter, Archives, and Categories
Awesome article as always, thanks for writing all this helpful content on a regular basis.