BetterTogether - a new Drupal Design Project

I've recently completed a new video website for The Wheel called bettertogether.ie.  Better Together! is a public awareness campaign where charities and commuity groups can show off what they are doing to make Ireland a better place to live (or in some cases other countries) by showcasing their work through videos.  The campaign is centring around a video competition and I am very excited to have been a part of it.

The challenge in putting together the site was to make it as simple as possible to enter and upload a video without burdening potential entrants with user accounts and other such barriers, but to also make it simple for those with existing videos to join in the fun.  The visual design for the site is quite minimalist, following the lead of the logo in colour choice.  I was especially pleased with how the footer (an oft neglected piece of screen real estate) turned out!  A healthy dose of JQuery sprinkled around the site livens things up and keeps interest alive.  A particularly cool feature is the mashup with Google Maps, which shows the location of every video on a map of Ireland.  In a month's time I want to see that map crammed full of little red markers!

I chose Drupal as the platform for the project as it is infinitely flexible, and modular.  As always, the site is crafted through the Content Construction Kit and Views, with a dash of Rules and other such fun.  Now that the site is online, the next challenge is to promote the competition and get it all rolling.  As of this writing, the competition and campaign officially launch tomorrow. 

See how you can make a difference in your community at www.bettertogether.ie

Update (15/11/10)

The Better Together video competition is now over, with judging commencing and awards scheduled for 10 days time.  The last week saw a huge spike in traffic to the site as people browsed videos, entered the competition and got their mates to come vote!  The site was hosted on an excellent Linux shared hosting package from Hosting Ireland.  For really minimal cost the site performed well under a barrage of relentless traffic.  I am really impressed with it and am happy to recommend Hosting Ireland for anyone's hosting needs.  Their customer support is excellent, control panel non-complex and prices are very reasonable.  Visit them here: www.hostingireland.ie