THE CLIENT

Preston & District Scouts is a registered Scout District, with the Scout Association, situated in Preston, Lancashire. They are one of eight districts within the Scout County of West Lancashire and cover the city of Preston as well as surrounding areas from Lea to Longridge and Catforth to Ribbleton. They offer the young people of Preston a chance to learn #SkillsForLife, through numerous activities and awards

WHAT I DID

The client felt that the website for the district was very outdated and need bringing back into the 21st Century and into line with the new brand guidelines issued by the Scout Association back in 2018. With the help of another member of the new district media team, we set about designing a completely new website from the ground up based on the WordPress content management system (CMS). We used a theme, called SkillsForLife, that was designed by Scouts for Scouts, from Mersey Weaver Scout District based in Cheshire along with a number of plugins from the 2nd New Haw Scout Group to enhance the themes functionality.

Visitors to the site needed to be able to find out about each section and the location of the different groups as well their meeting times and any contact details. To combat this we implemented pages for each section, explaining about the different ones and what they can get up to as well as a ‘Group Finder’ where visitors can input their postcode and select the required section from a list of options which will then bring up a list of the groups nearest to them that are running the required section. They can also click on the group name which will then take them to a page that contains information about that group, such as their location, meeting times, contact details and necker colours as well as any volunteering roles that the group is currently looking to fill.

We have also implemented a volunteer management system where can list any volunteer roles that need filling from across the district and then advertise them on the website and the districts social media platforms on behalf of groups.

As well as the information designed for current and prospective parents, we have added a section for the many volunteers within the district to provide them with support for running their section and to give them access to any useful resources.

In the future we are looking to implement an online shop where volunteers will be able to order badges to give to the young people and where parents will be able to order uniform items as well.