Invitation To Bid: Moretonhampstead Community Website

Moretonhampstead

Moretonhampstead is an ancient market town situated within the Dartmoor National Park in Devon. The Parish is over 6,000 acres in size with a population of around 1700. It has a selection of shops, pubs, and cafes, and services including a post office, Health Centre, cottage hospital, library and primary school. It is a lively community, partly revitalised in recent years by several new projects e.g. public arts, Information Centre, Learning Centre, Sports and Community Centre, funded through the efforts of Moretonhampstead Development Trust and other organisations.

In 2002 it won Devon Village of the Year competition.

The project

The project is to design and build a new website that will be the prime source of information about and for the community. It will improve on the current website (Moretonhampstead.com) which is many years old now.

Objectives

• Give up-to-date, topical and accurate information about Moretonhampstead
• Bring together local individuals and organisations under a “one-stop” website, taking care not to exclude anyone
• Promote and showcase local businesses and tourism
• Promote and market the town and environs of Moretonhampstead to non-residents
• Create an attractive and popular website, based on ease of use and encouraging participation, with a potential for growth
• Draw on the strengths and enthusiasm of local people to help develop and update the site, reflecting the unique nature of this community

Features

• A clear, straightforward structure and navigation (both for users and search engines), with a site-wide search facility
• Use of metadata, keywords and copy writing with search engine optimisation in mind
• A high level of accessibility (meet industry standards)
• Be built for optimum use on different computers, browsers etc, using “lightweight” technologies
• Be built to enable easy growth, either by adding new sections to existing areas, or by adding new areas in the same look and feel as the rest of the site.
• Ability to be managed by a single (preferably local) point of contact who can act as editor, webmaster and diary compiler for the community.
• A content management system to enable stakeholders to maintain their own pages. This should be simple but not too technical. It should be designed with care, and if possible be tested on potential users at various stages.
• A stable and suitable hosting environment, reflecting the size and usage of the site.
• Low maintenance requirement - using templates and other techniques should enable pages to be changed easily without specialist input.
• Reflecting the needs of the owners and users; users should be able to submit content, not only to their own pages but to a common notice-board that is moderated.
• The facility to enable local people to create and run their own spaces on the website.
• A subtle but distinctive design - sensitive to and reflective of the town and its residents in its look and feel. Local images should be used but with care. As each stakeholder has individual views and needs, there should be distinctive individual pages (in terms of content), but with an overall coherence across them all.
• The number of pages/areas of the site needs to be managed carefully. Although the site needs to have a broad coverage, it shouldn’t sprawl too much.
• Facility to accommodate advertising, mostly local
• Facility to allow users to e-mail businesses and organisations represented on the site.
• Flexibility to complete and send a booking form for courses; add, at a later date, booking facilities for tourist attractions and accommodation
• Flexibility to add e-commerce payment options via external organisations such as Paypal

Content

• An attractive homepage, a “Gateway to the Moor”, regularly updated from other parts of the site
• A content management system enabling “owners” to update their own pages
• An independent news section and events diary, capable of being expanded to accommodate the monthly “News in Moreton” newspaper in due course (this would require its own subscription)
• Clearly divided content, with consistent navigation
• Attractive images of the area, maps, video etc
• Facilities for members of the public to submit comments, blogs, information, pictures in flexible formats
• Listings of local organisations, and links to their own sites as appropriate
• Pages for specific organisational needs: an illustrative list of the particular bodies that will need their own pages are:
 Moreton Development Trust (especially for the Parish Plan, newsletters, advertising of adult education classes, booking facility for these classes)
 Moreton Parish Council (e.g. minutes, planning notices)
 Moreton Business Association (linking to their own site) with the local business directory (“Golden Pages” – currently produced bi- annually and only available on paper) including all small businesses, artists etc. with links to their own sites
 Visitors Information Centre - Tourist attractions including Town Trail, eating places, shopping, links to accommodation providers as currently, with ability for them to do own updates. Links to bodies such as the Dartmoor National Park, SW Tourism
 Children’s and Youth groups – Pre-school, Primary School (link to own site), Heathfield (Bovey Tracey) Children’s Centre (link), Scouts, Youth Club, Holiday activity club, After school club, events diary and booking forms for some activities – Moreton Association for Youth is the umbrella group. It should link to the “Awards for All” youth club website, where children have built their own pages/site
 Moreton Carnival – with pictures of previous years, and events diary
 King George V Sports & Community Centre, individual sports clubs, and Swimming Pool – facilities, timetables, diary, links
 Churches - St Andrew’s Parish Church & Baptist Church
 History Society - One-page blurb with a reciprocal link (opening in a new window)
 Moreton Action Group for Sustainability – information about energy conservation, renewables, advice, projects, contacts, links
 The volunteer community – giving posts, functions, vacancies , support available (link to CVS); charity shops with times etc
 University of 3rd Age – events, courses, contacts
 MED Theatre
 Public services – links to police, fire, local authorities
 Music and entertainment e.g Variety Group, Moortones, Moorhens, pub events, Moreton Entertainment events
 Recycling facilities – special local arrangements plus link to Teignbridge DC and Devon CC. Health facilities – not just local NHS but complementary therapies available
 Artists / crafts-people page, with examples, contact details, links and events, craft groups
 Ramblers Group – diary of walks, pictures
 Twinning Association – diary of events, reports of visits, links to French site
 Other small businesses, interest groups etc e.g. Women’s Institute, Allotments Society, Flower club, Flower Show, Community Club

Some of these have their own logos which will need to be displayed.

We would like to be able to match in quality other sites we have seen, such as Ashburton, Chagford and Teignmouth.

After-care

Allowance in the bid should be made for training the site administrator / moderator.

We will want to be absolutely satisfied that the proposed arrangements for hosting are sustainable.

Bidding Procedure

If you are interested in undertaking this project, please let us have an outline bid to include:

o Information about you or your organisation
o The team who would do the work, with details of their experience
o Customer references, including other websites created
o Your full contact details
o Your overall approach
o Design tools you would use
o Proposed hosting arrangement
o Contractual terms
o Price

The maximum target price for this contract is £8,500 including VAT.

Your bid should be in a sealed envelope marked WEBSITE TENDER and reach the address below by 12 noon on Wednesday 14 January. We will then select a preferred bidder with whom we will negotiate a more detailed specification.

The completion date for the project is to be 14th March 2009.

If you have any questions about the project, please call or email us at MORETONHAMPSTEAD DEVELOPMENT TRUST, (01647) 440855 or mdtmanager@onetel.com