Working on this First World War website has opened my eyes to look at my county with fresh eyes. For instance, I never noticed this WW1 memorial before – see photos – though I have been cycling past it twice a day for two years. 
I guess the ‘Push’ rosette once operated a tap to fill the bowl and perhaps the trough too for animals to drink from?
If you know anything more about that war memorial (it’s on Middle Street, Falmer BN1 9PD) you will soon be able to add information about it, and any other war memorials in the county, on a facility which is coming soon – follow the ‘Take part’ link below.
I can’t wait to see the website grow with your stories and images! So please spread the word – tell your friends and family, your work colleagues and your neighbours:
Mini blog on the WW1 website inception
What a contrast it has been to work on this discrete First World War project. So different from my core work as web editor on our very large and complex website for East Sussex County Council. In that role we immerse ourselves in the worlds of roads, libraries, children’s services and adult social care – to name but a few!
In the First World War project, we took care with every aspect, scoping out different options for the new website, trawling the web to see what was already out there, identifying what human resources we’d need to make a success of it.
Experts
It’s been invaluable to liaise with our staff at the The Keep (East Sussex Record Office) who are expert in taking care of historical items.
And we had the good fortune to be able to work with experienced digital heritage consultants at Orangeleaf Systems, who built the site and could integrate it with other national websites and the existing catalogues of The Keep. And when the centenary comes to an end in 2018, we have designed the project so that all the data and web pages will be available for future generations via The Keep.
For the first few months of the website’s life we have recruited a WW1 expert, in Dr Chris Kempshall, to research new articles for the website and work with the community to gather original material.
Chris is an enthusiast and great communicator. The week he started we created a Twitter account and he immediately started to build an audience there which is now driving traffic to the site. To reach other audiences we are circulating leaflets and bookmarks in libraries and other community venues.
Teamwork
Pulling the site together has relied on teamwork which was made easy with Indea Cadman-Rivers alongside. Input was gathered from so many sources, including senior management at the highest level as well as user testing with volunteers. In this way we steered the project towards optimum functionality given the resources and time available.
Due to its nature, the website needed special attention to get the tone right – the look and feel. Here in the communications team at ESCC, we have a wealth of skills to tap into: one of our designers, Madeline Whitty, was responsible for the beautiful graphics and overall website design, with timely input from Matt Tooke, head of our digital services, and James Boyes, account manager. Plus we were able to gather feedback from our marketing experts and all those in our digital team, in an iterative way as the website design grew.
We’ll be monitoring how visitors use the site. If we spot any problems, we’ll make changes based on this data. And as we use it ourselves we will continue to get ideas for how to make it even better.
We hope East Sussex residents will be as passionate about the project as us.
