Save Radio New Zealand

Save Radio New Zealand - homepage

Website: no longer online - view screenshots

Size: WordPress website, approx 30 pages of content

My professional status: independent web designer/developer

Website client: Save Radio New Zealand

Dates: February 2010 - September 2017

Categories: Client liaison, Project manager, IA & UX, Website designer, Front-end developer, Writing for the web, Content-loader, Webmaster, CSS-based layout, WordPress, Small sites

Brief: to rapidly put together a WordPress website - based on an existing theme to save time - for the Save Radio New Zealand campaign, which began life as a Facebook group in February 2010.

I wrote and put together a set of pages for the website, which the campaign organisers could then edit and add to as they wished. I also volunteered to be the website's webmaster on an ongoing basis.

Wow Alison, the site is looking very good, I'm loving the intro page, very well written! :) Can i thank you (and name you) publicly on the facebook site? Feedback is good. People really like it.

Save Radio New Zealand Facebook group organiser

My responsibilities included:

  • Selection of a suitable WordPress theme, Titan by the Theme Foundry, which I subtly restyled to match the existing Save Radio New Zealand logo and branding
  • Design of the information architecture of the site, including building the initial site skeleton in WordPress
  • Webhost selection and management
  • Writing the content for the first 30-odd pages on the site
  • Liaising closely with the campaign organisers to ensure that the sections and pages I was creating were appropriate for the campaign's use
  • Coming up with ideas for new sections and sub-sections on the site, and running these ideas by the campaign organisers before I put them online
  • Extensive online research for various parts of the website, so that I could be sure that the information we were providing was completely accurate
  • Extensive testing of the WordPress site at all stages of the development process, ensuring consistency across the following browsers and platforms:
    • PC: Internet Explorer IE6, IE7, IE8; Firefox, Opera, Chrome
    • Mac: Firefox, Opera, Safari, Chrome
  • Integration and restyling of the NextGen photo gallery plugin which is utilised in various places across the site
  • Emailing the Broadcasting and Arts Culture & Heritage spokespeople and/or party leaders of all the major political parties to ask for a summary of their party's policy on Radio New Zealand funding, so that we could include these on the website in order that visitors can compare them directly.

It occurred to me the day I took part in the Save Radio New Zealand demonstration outside Parliament, that the URL saveradionz.co.nz might still be available. It was, so I bought it and offered it, together with a website, to the organisers of the Save Radio New Zealand Facebook group. They accepted, so I spent the next couple of weeks selecting a WordPress theme and putting the site together.

I find it fascinating that the cliché of starting a Facebook group in order to protest something-or-other can actually be extremely effective. The original group rose to 20,000 members in just over a month, which by anyone's standards in this small country of ours is quite a substantial number. The website is a logical extension - and proved that people power can be a force for change. It certainly rekindled my interest in political activism!