UK Semiconductors 2012
Our latest site is for UK Semiconductors 2012, an annual conference on all aspects of semiconductor research.
The brief for UK Semiconductors was for a site that would be flexible, but easy to manage. Both requirements are met by the WordPress Content Management System (CMS).
Ease of use: There are a lot of very powerful CMS systems available, but most have a steep learning curve. This is a serious problem for a conference site, where you are only actively editing the site for part of each year – you don’t want to spend a lot of time trying to remember how things work! WordPress’ simple visual editing system permits live WYSIWYG editing of existing pages, the excellent news management system is totally intuitive (simply stacking new news items on top of older ones!); finally, the simple visual menu builder (drag and drop new pages to where you want them in the menu) is child’s play…
Above right: UK Semiconductors website on a full width display, showing sponsors’ logos along the foot of the page (click for full size image).
Speed and flexibility: For an annual conference there is a need to be able to switch much of the furniture from one year to the next – adapting the 2011 templates permitted us to offer the flexibility to upload a new banner (or offer a random banner from a selection, your choice!). Whilst adapting a standard template offered less scope for innovative design, it also really speeds up the development process, enabling us to get from kick-off meeting to completed site in a week…
Device flexibility: It is valuable for a conference site to be flexible – you want delegates to be able to check out what is going on during the conference, be able to check the program on their smart phones during the event. UK Semiconductors re-organises its page structure to permit visitors to view the site without scaling or lateral scrolling on devices with displays that are only 400px wide.
Right: UK Semiconductors website on a 400px wide display. The banner has re-sized to fit the new width, and the calendar and news items now appear below the main article, so all elements of the page can be read easily without scrolling (or squinting!)
Additional functionality: To complete the site, we also added a couple of custom plugins. These allow the conference organiser to add a gallery of sponsor’s logos below each page of the site, and to add a simple calendar of events, so delegates have a quick reminder of what is coming up on each page of the site. (WordPress is easy to build for, if what you need is not available from a massive public library of free and commercial plugins, so there is no need to compromise!).
Visit: UK Semiconductors 2012 for more details about the conference, or to see the site in action.
