Introducing the New DAR Public Website

I am thrilled to announce that the DAR Public Website has undergone an extensive redesign to enhance the look and functionality of our website. The new site is now live and can be found at www.dar.org.

This is the first redesign of the DAR Public Website in ten years, so it was certainly time for the site to get a new look and to bring the site and its functionality up to today’s standards. I am thrilled that the new design is contemporary, forward thinking, inviting and easy to use. What a great tool to show the world Today’s DAR!

Not only is the look and feel of the new site different, but the entire technical backend of the site has been rebuilt as well. The site is now maintained in a content management system called Drupal. This system is highly regarded as one of the best and is used by many large for-profit companies, government and non-profit organizations.

The new website also features a responsive design, which means the site adjusts to fit whatever type of device you are using. For example if you are visiting dar.org on your tablet or smartphone, the site will shrink from its full size to smaller size that fits the device, so that you still have access to all of the features of the full website. This was confirmed as a necessity for the new website once we discovered that more than 30% of our visitors were using some type of mobile device to access the DAR website.

I hope you will take time to explore the new website and the wonderful new features it offers. To get a better sense of the changes on the website, this DAR Website New Feature Highlights document has been created to explain some of the new features of the site and to show how they work.

The website will continue to be enhanced and grow. With our new design we have many opportunities to expand the site by creating new content and features. Of course with a project this big, there may also be things we didn’t catch, so we welcome you bringing our attention to them and appreciate your patience as we continue to make enhancements to the site. We hope you will provide us with your feedback to help us improve the site and continue to make it work better for our users. Please take this survey once you’ve explored the new site and let us know if you have any questions, if you experience any problems or hope to see areas enhanced.

The DAR Members’ Website will be next to be redesigned. The site is currently being developed now and will launch in the early Fall. The new members’ site will have the same look and feel as the new DAR Public Website to give a consistent brand to our entire web presence. You will notice that the GRS, eMembership and our social media sites will also have the same look and feel once some final touches can be made to them this week.

This website redesign has been a massive project and special thanks must go to our DAR Headquarters website redesign team of Amanda DeFrancesco, Web Content Coordinator, Victor Kunze, Director of Information Systems, and Bren Landon, Director of Public Relations, for their hard work on this project. They have spent close to a year, from research to implementation and everything in between, working with the web development company, New Target, on this redesign and they have done a wonderful job. Headquarters departments and a number of members also provided feedback and beta testing on the new site and we thank them for their volunteer efforts to contribute to the success of this redesign.

A special thanks also goes to all of our members who are supporting this redesign through their contributions to the President General’s Project. I am proud that the DAR Website redesign is part of the work of the President General’s Project. With so many people gathering their information online these days, our website is usually the first impression of our organization and these enhancements will help raise public awareness of the DAR and the great work of our Society.

Have fun exploring the new DAR Public Website!