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On Friday 25th March, the Strawberry web team took on the challenge to not only stay awake for a full 24 hours, but to during that time create a full multimedia website from scratch that looked great and met all of the client's requirements. View site
The challenge: Local charity, The Smile Foundation, required a new website.
The problem: They needed it quickly, but we had a very busy production schedule.
The solution: We decided to build the website, free of charge, in just 24 hours …
Yes that’s right, we’re not kidding! On Friday 25th March, the Strawberry web team took on the challenge to not only stay awake for a full 24 hours, but to during that time create a full multimedia website from scratch that looked great and met all of the client’s requirements.
We are pleased to say that we did it! It was a hard slog and it took the web team a couple of days to recover afterwards, but the results we achieved were fantastic. The charity was over the moon with the end result and we received lots of positive feedback via our Twitter and Facebook profiles.
So, how did we do it? As many of you reading this post will know, websites usually take at least a couple of months to develop from scratch, so to produce one in just 24 hours is certainly challenging. We won’t lie, coffee, Red Bull and a mountain of goodies supplied by The Smile Foundation helped us to get through the day (and very long night!).
Our New Media Director, James Greenwood, takes up the story: “The 24 hour website build was certainly one of the most challenging things I’ve ever done and I’m sure the rest of the web team would agree! At the start of the day we had to set up the hosting and crack on with the design immediately. The client loved the design we came up with so we managed to get this signed off quite quickly, which allowed us to create the HTML5 templates by mid-afternoon.
“The templates were separated into different sections for coding including the header, footer and content area. The CSS work was then started whilst the content management system was plugged in. Styling whilst editing the content and making the content management system was a nightmare – but we got there in the end! This was all taking place with radio interviews and photographs being taken around us – it was probably one of the most hectic days we have had in the office for a long time!
“At about 6.20am we had an hour off – some of us caught 40 winks, some of us watched TV, the rest of us played with our kids who had decided to wake up at the crack of dawn! We returned to the office for 8am to check our work, upload photos and check for any dead links. Then, the website went live!
“Those of you who are reading this that also follow us on Twitter will know that we tweeted about our progress throughout using the hash tag #smile24. You will also know that we celebrated the site going live with a cheeky glass of Pimms! Following that, we went home and slept. All weekend.”
So there you have it – that’s how we managed to build a website in just 24 hours. No, we didn’t develop any time stopping skills like Hiro Nakamura from Heroes, we simply worked as a team, planned for any problems that could arise and drank lots of caffeine. You can see the full website in all of its glory by visiting http://heysmilefoundation.org/. You can also see some photos of the team from the day (and some more unflattering ones the following morning) on our Facebook page.
"We absolutely love the new website and we have had fantastic feedback. We now have a brand new website that we can be proud of!"
After initial meetings, we were bowled over when Strawberry offered to provide us with a brand new editable web site free of charge. We understood that their time schedule was extremely tight and were delighted when they suggested turning the web build into a fun 24hr challenge so that we could also use the opportunity to raise awareness of the Smile Foundation. I have to say that the team at Strawberry were incredibly helpful in advising what they could provide to suit our needs and offered plenty of suggestions that we hadn’t thought of. We can’t thank Jonathan and the team at Strawberry enough for our all singing, all dancing eye catching website.