Following several months of planning and preparation my latest big project at work came to fruition today.

Screen shot of the new DisasterOne.com

Working with website design vendor 4Marketshare we achieved a complete makeover of the Disaster One website, giving it a vastly more contemporary look and improved functionality. Along the way we revamped our SEO (search engine optimization) terms and phrases, fine tuning according to the search volume relevant to our industry.

My role as project manager was two-fold: I was responsible for planning and steering the project from concept to completion with the vendor, and (the really fun part) I wrote most of the content for the new site.

Built on WordPress

The new site is built on a WordPress platform – lucky for me since I’ve been happily blogging here on WordPress for a little over two years. Managing and maintaining the new site will be a breeze, especially compared to the Contribute tool I used previously. This will be my first experience running a full website on WordPress though, in contrast to the Chip Away blog.

Emphatic thanks to Ellen Thompson (@thompsonellen), founder/CEO of 4 Walls and 4Marketshare (@4Marketshare) for the incredible service provided throughout this project. Today Ellen called me “probably the most SEO sophisticated client I have dealt with.” As flattering as that may be ( and I am flattered), I kind of feel bad for Ellen if the rest of her clients know even less than I do. Bless her heart, as we say down South.

Now it’s your turn – have you worked on a website redesign? What’s your story?