source: 4WardEverUK

published: January 2023

Between November 2022 and January 2023 the 4WardEverUK website underwent its fourth and final comprehensive upgrade since its first launch in 2006. The website underwent a significant downsize in relation to its content and frequency of output, whilst retaining crucial popular archived resources.

This redevelopment was made possible by generous donations of resources and time that was offered from our two key partners, Naphtali Associates and First Stop Web Design.

Our primary domain remains as www.4wardeveruk.org and you can also access the website with secondary domains, www.4wardever.org.uk & www.4wardever.org.

So why the change?

There are a number of key influencers of this change which includes:

Human resources capacity

Over the years since the development of 4WardEverUK in 2006, we have gradually focussed more of our time into the area of developing and collaborating with various parties to provide direct support services (e.g. The National Memorial Family Fund, Red Alert HELP, The Peoples Tribunal, Catalyst 4 Change, The Mentoring & Advocacy Support Hub (M.A.S.H) and others. This was always part of out long-term plan.

Keeping vast resources updated

The 4WardEverUK website contained a vast array of resources and information. Ensuring that this all remained up-to-date and relevant took an awful lot of time, and that time was increasingly difficult to find given our small and intermittent volunteer capacity. Also, the availability of information on the web has progressed significantly since our launch, when this was not the case.

We have kept the Red Alert HELP! DIY Portal and transferred key resources over during the upgrade.

Website performance and maintenance!

We previously used the hosted WordPress platform for the 4WardEverUK website, and as good as this is, the platform also takes up a great deal of maintenance time. Once again, given our current human resources capacity and focus on direct service provision, it was increasingly a challenge managing these performance issues. We have now switched to the Duda platform which has significantly improved performance and a much reduced maintenance load on our small team.

So what’s new on 4WardEverUK?

The new upgraded website has a refreshed interface and contemporary look as well as a number of other changes including:

Website content

We have reduced some of the previous content, only retaining that which was most popular with our visitors and which are core to our mission and purpose. In our main menu some previous items were not migrated including ‘Publications’, ‘Film Library’, ‘Appeals & Petitions’, and ‘Around the UK/World.'

The website will however (over due time) include featured or links to third party sources in these discontinued genres.

Navigation menu

The menu structure is now simpler to navigate and lighter in its content, but retains our most popular and mission-driven topics such as 'Case Profiles', Legal Help & Research', 'Galleries' and 'Useful Links' etc.

See more from home!

Our new homepage has more previews and links to core page content visible to visitors. Snippets of recent news items are also displayed in a new panel.

Faster and less clutter

The new website has faster page load times and has been tested on all popular web browsers. We have further reduced clutter in the new design which is much easier on the eye. With larger print throughout the website, our visually impaired users will find the content much easier to read.

Responsive Design

This website is responsive – which means it should adapt to meet the screen-size when viewed on tablets and other mobile devices. (Read more here)

Integrated e-Newsletter

We post broad areas of news consistent with our purpose in regular bulletin alerts and e-Updates as well as through our social media channels. We will be further developing the system as time goes on, and hope that our subscribers find the content of our newsletter useful and informative.

Accessibility

We have taken all steps within our means to ensure the new website broadly complies with W3C standards and with The Equality Act ensuring that people with disabilities will be able to use the site and have the same access to content and resources as any other visitors. This is an area of ongoing development that 4WardEverUK will be committed to indefinitely.

If you have any queries regarding our content:

Contact 4WardEverUK via enquiries@4wardever.org.uk

For website technical issues or errors:

Contact First Stop Design via enquiries@firststopwebdesign.net 

We would like to thank all of our volunteers (past and present) readers, contributors, donors and supporters that have assisted 4WardEverUK over its 17 year history.