Mississippi Home Educators Association

Work Performed: Web Design & Hosting
Time Frame: ~1 Month
Website: http://www.mhea.net

The Original Site

Mississippi Home Educators Association (MHEA)’s president approached me to inquire about recreating the old website for their organization. The original site was created around 10 years, and definitely needed a facelift, as well as a improved functionality. They needed something that would be professional-looking, clean, navigable, and easy to update in the future. I instantly thought of WordPress as my management system of choice.

I went to work immediately, beginning to work with the client and take notes on how exactly he wanted the new site to look. It had to be easy to navigate, to find vital information. It also needed to be the “face” of the organization, so it needed to look professional and not out of date.

Using a customized WordPress theme, I was able to achieve all of these goals. I converted important documents into PDF format, clearly marking them with buttons so people could find them easily.

I also divided the important content into pages, organizing what used to be a single page of content into several pages. AJAX tooltips were added to the header to make things easier to explain for newcomers. An About page that described the organization and its board members were added, as well as an interactive map of Support Groups for the organization, organized by county. An AJAX search engine was added to show search results “on the fly.”

The end result was what I had hoped to achieve. The client (and the board of directors) were well pleased with the finished product, and I worked closely with them to tweak the site until they decided it was ready to go. Once released, the client was able to watch the statistics of the site skyrocket into several hundred hits per day. It is expected to increase from week to week as their clientele discover the ease of the new site.

You can view the site in full here: http://www.mhea.net

“Our organization’s website appeared stale and dated; the need for a major overhaul was obvious.  I contacted MaroonWorks. We met with them, reviewed goals for the site, and conveyed functional requirements.  The final product was beautifully done, both visually appealing and functionally sound; we could not have been more pleased.” – David Easley, President, MHEA