Welcome to the first iteration of SOMO’s new web site! This is the first step in what we expect will be a year-long process to revise many aspects of our web site. SOMO wants to thank Dave Hawes and John Bogasky for their efforts to bring us this new site!
Its Now Mobile-Friendly!
The biggest change with this first step was porting our web site to a new technical platform. Our web site is now mobile-friendly on every page. Try it on your phone to see for yourself.
Faster Response Times With a New Look and Feel
It had been at least 10 years since we had last updated some of the core technologies underlying the web site. The upgrades have greatly sped up the site’s response times. The upgrades also offer a wider range of font, graphic and layout options to improve the site’s look and usability. We have taken advantage of some of these new features in this first release.
Piloting a New Standard Layout for Sports Pages
We have a new design for our Sports pages that we are piloting first for our Winter Sports (Snowshoe, Alpine Skiing, and Cross-Country Skiing). The new design uses sidebars on the right to present details that change each season. Experienced athletes can look here to quickly find the exact dates for upcoming season practices, qualifiers, and state games. Also prominent is the Medical Expiration Date for athlete medicals and volunteer certifications for the upcoming season.
The main body of each Sports page aims first at explaining the sport to potential new athletes. It includes a basic description of the sport, links to the official Special Olympics rules and Fact Sheets for the sport, and an overview of what to expect at team practices and competitions. New sections address the equipment and uniform requirements for each sport.
Our intent with this new design is to communicate more successfully with two audiences, returning athletes already familiar with how the sport operates, and potential new athletes considering joining the team.
The new design is fully implemented for the three winter sports and partially implemented for all other sports. Our plan is to update each sport as its season approaches and before we open sign-ups for that sport. This is consistent with our longstanding practice of annually updating a Sport’s web page as its upcoming season approaches.
Explanatory Photos for Every Sport
Each Sport page now has one or more photos at the top. A picture is worth a thousand words, so we tried to choose pictures that convey the sport and how we adapt them for our athletes. For example, the Bowling page shows the ramps that some athletes use, the Cycling photos include tricycles, and the Golf page shows Level 1 stations as well as play on the courses. Too often, prospective athletes don’t sign-up because they don’t believe they are “athletic”. The photos try to show how we welcome athletes of all abilities into our programs.
Announcement Banners on the Home Page
The top 3 boxes on the Home Page allow us to post announcements and highlight upcoming events. Watch these spots for late breaking announcements. We can have up to 9 announcement banners at a time should that ever be needed. Every announcement banner has a Read More button that leads to more detail.
Our Events Calendar is Now on Facebook
The SOMO events calendar will focus on our non-athletic social events (e.g., the upcoming Halloween and Christmas parties) and on our fundraisers (e.g., the Montgomery Masters Golf Tournament and the Inspiration Walk). The Events calendar will also show SOMO-hosted qualifiers such as Spring Games and the SOMO Golf Qualifier at Rattlewood. Team practices, qualifiers and state games will be communicated by coaches and the web page for each sport.
Click on Events under About Us to see SOMO’s Event Calendar on Facebook.
Next Steps
The rest of the site essentially matches the old site, but with a new look and feel provided by our new platform.
Our first priority is to update all of the Sports pages to the new standards. This will happen over the next year as part of the routine annual updates to each sport’s web page.
Next, we plan to revamp the Support SOMO web pages, implementing an improved, more integrated approach to sponsorship, fundraising and donor recognitions. This needs to be completed by year-end to support next year’s fundraising efforts.
Third, we want to revamp the Volunteer web pages, making it easier to learn about volunteer opportunities and to complete and submit the volunteer application.
Finally, we want to enhance the athlete and volunteer sign-up process. It will still be based on Google forms, but we believe there are opportunities to make this process easier to use.
Send Us Your Suggestions
If you have suggestions for improving our web site, please send them to webmaster@somdmontgomery.org. Using that address will get them to all of the folks that support our web site.