Frankenbike website screenshot (click for larger image)
When Chris at FrankenBike.net talked about his plans to take this monthly swap meet national, I knew right away that in order to do that, he needed a web strategy. After all, the old website looked dated in its HTML TABLE tag construction, was hard to update, and just plain didn’t scale the way his plans demanded.
The main challenge for FrankenBike was adding new events in new cities. The reason for this was that each new city requires its own website to post schedules, share location information, pictures, etc.; a daunting task for a small, low-budget operation.
Free, Open-source, CMS website for non-profit
I proposed a Content Management System website based on the WordPress platform (like this site).
The strategy behind this idea was not only enabling my client to multiply the cities as needed (with very little web-savvy needed), but also enable each city’s representative to update their own schedule, publish timely information and content, thus enabling a network of FrankenBike events tied together by a single, central website address. All this on a free, open-source platform.
How to make WordPress work for a non-profit
I produced a minimalistic visual design, with a focus on content and its organization. Since most content maintenance is performed by the client, I didn’t want to add the burden of creating graphics for the site.
Fig.1 Frankenbike website instructions
While posts publish easily and automatically format, the content on the sidebars requires a little more involved editing.
A second document (Figs. 2–5) is an illustrated manual showing how to edit the side columns on his site.
The results have been fantastic. Immediately, the ability to easily reproduce the site opened up previously stalled opportunities in other cities, and the cross-linking from the sites helped boost traffic.
