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Design, development and hosting

The Big Oxford Computer Co. Ltd

Making Local Food

Public and partner portal website development

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"The Plunkett Foundation engaged BOCC to design and build the website for our Making Local Food Work programme. BOCC's level of service was excellent, timely and courteous, and the same can be said of their ongoing technical support. The entire process was project-managed exactly to time and to budget, and the visual design work has won admiration from all quarters".

Jan Trefusis - Senior Project Officer – Information, Communication and Evaluation - Making Local Food Work


Background

'Making Local Food Work' - community enterprise connecting land and people through food, is a Big Lottery funded initiative managed by the Plunkett Foundation. The five year partnership programme is aimed at reconnecting people and land through issues of food: access to fresh, healthy, local food and food that has a clear provenance.

 

Our brief

The Partners required a portal website that enabled everyone involved in the initiative from consumers, producers and partners to share and communicate online.

 

Our solution

BOCC produced the technical specification, information architecture / structure and functional modules for the new website. The portal was visually designed by BOCC's design team based on existing brand guidelines and styles. The design process included initial visual concepts, wire-frames and the development of the final HTML templates and style sheets.

The portal website includes a number of powerful Web 2.0 features that allows all users to come together as an online community:

  • Public website, secure extranet and microsites managed and maintained using YouDu CMS;
  • RSS news feed subscriptions;
  • Secure extranet site for Making Local Food Work Partners;
  • Social networking bookmarks;

 

  • Photo slideshow to highlight projects and events;
  • Discussion forums for sharing information across projects;
  • Searchable documents area for advice, support and guidance;
  • eNewsletter / email alerts sign-up;
  • Document management system.

BOCC also provided 'train-the-trainer' training sessions to key staff at The Plunkett Foundation in order for them to disseminate their skills to other staff and partners.

 

Technologies

The system utilises:

  • Microsoft™ SQL Server 2005
  • Adobe® ColdFusion®
  • AJAX
  • Microsoft Internet Information Server
  • Fully managed dedicated web server at BOCC
  • SSL (Secure Server Certificate)
  • Extensible HyperText Markup Language 1.0
  • Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) 2.0 Compliant