The Isle of Wight Family History Society have upgraded the website with a fresh modern look with the help of Island web design studio, Brightbulb Design. This initial phase of the website re-development provides several benefits to the society’s vast user base:
- A clean uncluttered look, intuitive to use, and designed to work on all devices.
- Improved search and display of family history data such as births, marriages and deaths.
- Enhanced display and indexes of members journals dating back to 1985.
- A more automated membership system, where members can control their own personal information, saving the society countless man hours managing membership subscriptions.
Geoff Allan, Chairman of the Society, explains,
“The website is our shop window to the world, not only for our 1300 members worldwide, but also to the public. The old website, although popular, has become cluttered over the years, and is becoming difficult to maintain by our committee. The new design and functionality will offer a better experience to everyone, especially since the current Covid-19 situation has restricted our normal activities, with no monthly meetings being held.”
“The lockdown period has seen a growth in the numbers of people researching their family history, and we aim to maintain our position as a complementary resource to the County Record Office, and national family history subscription-based websites. We opted to use a local business for the development to keep a small part of the Island economy afloat, and we have been extremely pleased with the results delivered by Brightbulb Design.”
The legacy website will remain in parallel use whilst, over the next few months, the society converts the remaining databases to the new format. Additional databases will also be introduced which are the result of transcription projects by the team of volunteers, who have been transcribing local records, remotely, and at the County Record Office.
We hope you enjoy using the new website, but please let us have any feedback or issues you might encounter, so that we can continue to improve it.
Posted 29 October 2020