Websites: College Fraternity Editors Association

The College Fraternity Editors Association is a nonprofit organization that provides training and services for graphic artists, magazine editors, web developers, and company spokespersons of fraternal organizations. It is run and managed entirely by volunteers from member organizations. I served on CFEA's board for three years and chaired a half-dozen of its committees.

CFEA AwardsCFEA was in need of a new website, one that would better showcase its services, enable members to share resources, and highlight the accomplishments of its member organizations. At the time, I was working for Carden Jennings Publishing's Fraternity Solutions Group. CJP, an official sponsor of CFEA, permitted me to build CFEA's new site for free in hopes that it would give the company greater exposure and showcase it web development talents.

I volunteered CJP's services and became chairman of CFEA's Website committee, which consisted of five volunteers who were spread out across the country. While I did receive some development support from my committee members, a high majority of the development was done alone.

CFEA Board of DirectorsThe greatest challenge with the site's redesign was the organization of its content and navigational structure. CFEA has many services that are not marketed well to its members, services that should be included in the site's new design. To accomplish this task, I had to communicate with volunteers, chairpersons, and board members who were spread out across the country. Each, of course, had separate agendas and ideas in regards to their content and its placement. Organization and compromise were essential during the information architecture phase of the redesign.

The second greatest challenge was self-imposed. How does one design a website that serves graphic designers, or write content for fraternal editors? Creating a look and voice for the site that would please and represent nearly 300 communication professionals was an obvious challenge for me to overcome. Ultimately, the site received a great deal of positive feedback for both its design and function.

The most notable area of the site is the Awards section. Each year, CFEA presents awards for design, writing, layout, and multimedia accomplishments to its leading member organizations. CFEA wanted to showcase each year's winning entries online to give the winners further recognition and to serve as a resource for ideas for other members who visit the website.

The site also serves as a virtual historian. Since CFEA is run entirely by volunteers, it does not have a central office or staff to provide continuity. By posting resources and accomplishments online, CFEA strengthened its services as the premiere association for fraternal editors.

Client: College Fraternity Editors Association
Type of work: Volunteer/Pro Bono via Carden Jennings Publishing
Description: Site redesign
Project role: Create a flagship website for fraternal writers, editors, graphic artists, and web developers. Although I had a committee of five volunteers, I developed nearly all of the creative ideas, images, content, navigation, and code.
Tools used: Macromedia Dreamweaver, Macromedia Fireworks, Macromedia Flash, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe ImageReady, Adobe Acrobat, EditPlus, SouperMail
Languages used: HTML, DHTML, CSS, JavaScript, SSI, Perl, CGI
Server resources: Apache/1.3.19 (Unix) FrontPage/5.0.2.2510 on Linux
Size of site: 300 pages, 55 GIFs, 430 JPGs, 2 PDFs
Website: www.cfea.org