July 20, 2010

Atomic goes for a full Nelson!

Atomic is proud to announce that we have put a figure-four leg-lock on our newest municipal client: The City of Nelson. We outmuscled our competition to win the bid to complete the online strategy for this terrific city, completed the final throes and it has now gone live!

Nelson is a stunningly pretty city of 10,000 people nestled among the Selkirk Mountains on the shores of majestic Kootenay Lake in south-east British Columbia, Canada. The City enjoys a wide array of advantages from outdoor recreation to city living and an abundance of business opportunities. The City is continually growing and it was realized that they needed a new and improved web presence that adequately represented the City's forward-looking vision.

A website re-design is but one of the tasks that we wrestled with for this project. Other work included revising the City's website architecture - no small feat when dealing with municipalities, whose websites enjoy a great wealth of content. Rich photos of the region and locality are highlighted so as to let the site show off the area's natural assets. We also created a new, text-based logo for Nelson that tied in with its design and City ethos.

Lastly, we integrated a content management system, ElementCMS, into the website and trained Nelson's staff on how to use the system. This allows City staff the ability to update the site themselves, insuring the content is continually fresh. This fresh content will help to drive repeat website visits from constituents, businesses and visitors alike and help the new website prosper. Additional CMS functionality was added in, allowing for administrators to have the ability to change text and images in each header on the website.

And this wasn't the only functionality we grappled with: RSS feeds were added, as were accessibility options and up-to-the moment weather feeds. A customized staff directory was also created that hides e-mails, thereby reducing the amount of spam received without hindering contact from constituents, visitors and businesses alike.

New website now live!

http://www.nelson.ca

April 26, 2010

MISA Site Gets Souped Up

We at Atomic are very happy to spill the beans and announce we were recently selected to re-design the website for the BC Chapter of the Municipal Information Systems Association (MISA). We're pretty excited about this project because this is no Cut & Paste job: MISA's new website is going to be a custom cavalcade of capitivating composition and clever coding.

The BC Chapter of MISA was formally established in April, 1994. MISA BC exists to promote greater co-operation among local government staff in the IT field by sharing information and developing common solutions on a broader and cost-effective scale. Joint efforts with other organizations with a national scope such as the Canadian Association of Municipal Adminstration (CAMA) and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM), have also become possible.

Not only will the site get a sparkling new makeover, but will have improved site architecture and navigation, a customized website search, social media integration (including Facebook auto update) and a shared events calendar. There will be a focus on website accessibility and browser/platform compatibility, as well as extensive application migration for apps such as: Event Registration, Discussion Form, Document Library, Member Database, User Management and many, many more.

The site will also feature online payment logging and extensive membership account features, such as the ability to add photos, logos and to register multiple conference attendees.

We're excited and full of beans! MISA's new website goes live in September.

March 18, 2010

We're Hiring

Atomic Crayon is currently seeking outstanding individuals eager to join our team of talented web professionals.

Intermediate Level Programmer
Atomic Crayon has an immediate opening for an Intermediate Level Programmer for a Full-time position. Read the full job description.

March 18, 2010

Atomic's Favourite Pet Project Goes Live!

Here at Atomic, we are a huge bunch of pet lovers. While some of us are barely responsible enough to feed our pet rocks with any regularity, we do love animals and that's why we are especially pleased that we have been selected to complete the new website for the Delta Community Animal Shelter (DCAS).

On January 1st, 2008, The Corporation of Delta took over animal control services and shelter operations from the Delta Humane Society. The animal shelter is now called Delta Community Animal Shelter. With their professional staff that cares for pets, DCAS is committed to maintaining a high level of animal care.

We created a brand new site for the DCAS, which meant a warm, stylish new design and a terrific new logo to go along with it. The site features customized News & Events features, a high-powered search engine, and a focus on web accessibility; this includes text-resizing for the visually impaired and RSS feeds for people to keep up to date on the latest happenings at the DCAS, and the new animals that arrive.

The site also features customized adoption forms and big, bright pages for each animal in the shelter, thereby helping each person find their perfect future pet.

The site was also integrated into our powerful content management system, ElementCMS. The CMS system will enable Shelter staff to update the website themselves, thereby reducing their website costs and allowing the money to be spent where it would be most needed: on the animals themselves.

http://www.deltacommunityanimalshelter.ca

February 26, 2010

Atomic Gets Back to the Future

Yes, we here at Atomic are excited about getting back to the future. Sadly, that doesn't mean owning a cool red puffy vest or driving a DeLorean; that was not our density. But we are proud to announce the release of our latest website: Shape Your Future Victoria - the home of the City of Victoria's Official Community Plan.

The City of Victoria is updating its Official Community Plan (OCP) to create a powerful vision and detailed plan to ensure that Victoria's growth and change over the next 30 years is sustainable. The plan sets direction for the city's growth, urban form, transportation, housing, services and infrastructure.

With such a large and important community-based goal to accomplish, the City of Victoria - a long-standing client - decided that they needed a microsite that focused specifically on the OCP. They want to drive people to this microsite as a single location at which constituents and members of the community can become involved.

For Shape Your Future Victoria site we created a bright, colourful and clean new design that showed off the natural beauty and terrific amenities that Victoria has to offer. Information was organized and laid out in a manner that will allow site visitors to access, read and contribute in the easiest way possible. Videos were added to help show off Victoria and what the City is trying to accomplish, and What's New, Events, and Media Release pages were created to increase the site's interactivity.

A customized search was also added to the site, which will help website visitors effortlessly find the important information they need about the OCP. Because the site was a municipally-funded project, accessibility was also a key; having the site reach as many people as possible was important to the City. With that in mind, we created a text-resizer and a high-contrast stylesheet for people with visual impairments. A mobile stylesheet was also implemented for those viewing the site on handheld devices. Lastly, we created the site using Wordpress templates - this is a content management system (CMS) that allows City staff to easily and affordably update the website themselves. Training for this CMS was also provided.

The future is now!

http://www.shapeyourfuturevictoria.ca