M8th Blog

Gwinnett County’s expanded and improved website, designed by Mighty 8th Media and officially launched in August 2011, has won two awards this year from the National Association of County Information Officers (NACIO). The county’s website earned both Superior and Best in Class Awards.

Judges reviewed nearly 350 entries in nine categories from large and small counties and county associations for the 2012 Awards of Excellence. County communications projects entered in this year’s competition demonstrated the breadth of county government services as well as counties’ commitment to inform and engage their citizens.

“We were pleased with how well and how quickly Mighty 8^th was able to design to our vision and specifications,” said Joe Sorenson, Communications Director for Gwinnett County. “The site provides for easy, intuitive navigation to county services and information, as well as a fresh, appealing web presence.”

For the county’s new site, we updated the way in which any visitor can access key information. Instead of organizing content around county structures, the new site allows each visitor to easily find information based on who they are or what they’re looking for. While this may sound like a simple change, it’s one that has likely had the largest impact on the overall user experience of the site.

Sorenson said feedback has been very positive, and that visitors say the site is easy to navigate, visually appealing and comprehensive. The site receives more than 272,000 hits per month and is loaded with inspiring photos that highlight life and work in Gwinnett County.

Visit the award-winning site at gwinnettcounty.com.

This week, we’re celebrating the launch of a fully custom and content manageable site for the Sisters of Our Lady of Sorrows. Mighty 8th Media has redesigned the Sisters’ website to reflect their charism and spirituality, as well as to honor their rich Italian heritage.

In effort to inform and attract those seeking a vocational life or wanting to support the Sisters’ mission, we built a custom system in WordPress that allows them to continually update their site easily and effectively—and one that will help continue to position them as a helpful spiritual resource and great vocational opportunity long into the future.

Within the established navigation, the new site allows the Sisters to add as many pages to their site as they wish and to customize content based on their needs. All of this customization is made possible with WordPress, the powerful tool we use to build our custom sites.

Here are a few of the exciting features on the new Our Lady of Sorrows site:

• Content-manageable header and footer images on each page
• Content-manageable sidebar callouts, which can be seen on each page
• Music player that showcases the Sisters’ music; this can be inserted onto any page, as seen here.
• Media Gallery where videos can be uploaded and organized by category for easy search/viewing.

Visit the website for Our Lady of Sorrows.