In August of 2005, we began a year long process of updating the visual look and improving the architecture and usability of the Downingtown Area School District's family of 14 web sites. The process began by evaluating the existing web sites and reviewing other school districts' sites. We reviewed all the local districts' sites as well as some districts that had been nationally recognized for web site excellence.

The research process was a collaborative one, with vital input coming from the Web Advisory Committee which was made up of teachers and administrators from around the district. The end result of this process was a new architecture for the school and district sites, varied by level (elementary, middle and high school). One of the project's main goals was consistency in both the visual branding of the district, as well as the organization and presentation of information for site visitors.

The end result is a visual design scheme that is very consistent across all levels. We wanted visitors to always know they were within the Downingtown Area School District from any page within any individual school site and to be able to quickly and easily navigate back to the top level navigation choices at both the school and district level. Screen shots of three example school home pages are shown here (one elementary, one middle school and one high school) to illustrate the consistency of the new design.

The visual design will remain consistent across the interior pages of all of the web sites as well. All interior pages, including teacher web pages, will utilize the same style of template. A home page and interior template for each school and the district level were created as part of this project.

A comprehensive Style Guide was also written to help with the transition to and maintenance of the new site structure and design guidelines.

This new visual design was presented to the School Board in May 2006. Implementation of this new design is being handled internally by Downingtown Area School District. Many of the live sites now utilize Neptune Moon's visual design and architectural structure.