TITCHMARSH VILLAGE (titchmarsh.info)
This website seems to have been constructed using WordPress, as the navigation bar right at the top of the screen seems familiar from the website building software. Below this is the branding for the village website and possibly also for the village itself, which features a hand-drawn/naive style that befits a small organisation or community. It gives the village a quaint and friendly style and is an attractive part of the page, drawing the eye straight in. By the side is a slideshow of images from Titchmarsh, and further down are articles and adverts about local events and news. There is also a ticker below the slideshow which scrolls through some of the latest news, as well as links to social media on the page.
The feel of this website is very cheerful and rural, and I would like to recreate some of the atmosphere generated by the colours, design and typography. The points that I would look to transfer onto a website for Our Happy Place are the slideshow, which can be a powerful tool to bring viewers into the page, and the ticker for latest news which is very useful for events such as road and school closures, but I may design something wherein it is incorporated into a Twitter feed.
LONG MELFORD VILLAGE (longmelford.co.uk)
This website for Long Melford is not as successful as that for Titchmarsh, and seems dated by today's standards, and possibly has remained largely unchanged for over a decade. The background is green, which fills the whole screen with plain colour, with the main body of the website set in white over the top. The first thing that catches the eye is a panorama of the village, but the image is not as inspiring as those shown by Titchmarsh, showing a boring scene on an overcast day. Below this is the main body of the website which is very wordy, but the links on the right hand side of the screen are visible and ensure that the site is easy to navigate. There is an option to like the website on Facebook, with a small button below the photograph, bringing in social media but it is perhaps not used as effectively as possible.
I'm not sure if there are any positives to this website to take forward into designing for Our Happy Place, but it seems functional. It is the sort of website that you would only view for a specific reason, and not one that you would spend any time on. However, it shows that even simple and small websites value social media plug-ins.
PEMBURY (pembury.org)
The website for Pembury is very similar to that of Long Melford, but is a little more dynamic. The background isn't a plain colour but is instead a collage of images with the opacity lowered so as not to distract from the information provided on the site. As well as this, the panoramic header is a slideshow and so more of the village can be shown to the viewer, and the whole page seems a little more modern and you'd want to spend more time on this than the last. Again, social media has been included, but this time it suggests that you follow the organisation on Twitter, and at the bottom of the page there are options to share it via Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and email.
Again, very functional but not an inspiring example of web design.
KINGTON ST MICHAEL (kingtonstmichael.com)
This is a very nineties looking offering, and is an assault on the senses with its confusion of colours, shapes and layouts. I wouldn't want to spend any considerable time on the website, and doesn't seem to add much for the village. This is one example that isn't up-to-date with social media, and has no mention of Facebook or Twitter, which could reflect the age demographic within the village or perhaps that of the designer. I feel that if I were to make a website for Our Happy Place with this style, it wouldn't add anything to the community and so I will avoid any of the trappings here.
WIGGINTON VILLAGE (http://wiggintonvillage.co.uk/)
I decided to look up my village's website, for Wigginton in Hertfordshire. It is another poor website, although the top navigational banner is like that used by Titchmarsh village, and there is a photographic background to the page. Again, the main bulk of the site is on a white background where the latest main stories can be posted, which on this day is quite a strange cartoon. On the right hand side is a good feature, with calendar entries for the week ahead for all the village's organisations.
I know that Francesca was keen for a calendar page on the Our Happy Place website, and this sort of style could be useful as a simple and obvious way of displaying upcoming events.
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