Fort Wayne Trails, Inc. site launches!

One of the great things about northeast Indiana is the extensive multi-use trail network that connects the community. From the grid of trails in Aboite to the riverside greenways in central Fort Wayne, to the upcoming Pufferbelly Trail that will connect north Fort Wayne to downtown, trails increase property value, improve quality of life, and is a major factor for workers deciding to move to this community from elsewhere. Not only is it a great source of exercise and recreation, but it promotes healthy, active transport: being able to get to your destination without the need for a motorized vehicle. In fact, their motto is Activus Transportare, Latin for “active transport.”

We recently had the privilege of creating the website for Fort Wayne Trails, a brand-new nonprofit in the Fort Wayne area that fundraises and advocates for this extensive trail system. Merged from three separate nonprofits: Aboite New Trails, the Greenway Consortium, and Northwest Allen County Trails; Fort Wayne Trails has the unique challenge of working with the Fort Wayne and Allen County governments in building these trails and raising public awareness.

So when we got the chance to create Fort Wayne Trails’ website, we jumped at the chance.

Because of the widespread community support, Fort Wayne Trails has some great partners in the community. One Lucky Guitar, a groundbreaking local marketing and design boutique (with some of the best work coming out of Fort Wayne), created the brand identity and print collateral for the Trails. Read about the design process on OLG’s blog, The Dial, here and here.

Working closely with the FWT Promotions Committee, we took a design created by designers on the committee, tweaked it a bit, and adapted it to fit with ExpressionEngine, our CMS of choice.

Some great features to note:

A “Photos” page, aggregating pictures from a predefined set in FWT’s Flickr account
A rotating slider on the homepage, displaying photos and messages set by the client
Popovers with explanations of the many uses of the trails, with icons ingeniously created by One Lucky Guitar
A made-from-scratch mapping functionality that overlays Google Maps’ KML files over a map. Users can turn each layer one and off, depending on what they want to route
Blogging functionality
Events calendar

While FWT’s outdoor events on the trails are on hold until the weather gets warmer, they’re hard at work, planning, coordinating, raising money, and making sure as many people as possible are connected to each other and points of attraction!

Why don’t you go over to their new website and take a look at who they are and what they do! And if you are able, please consider giving a gift of support — every penny they raise goes to a great cause!

This is only the beginning of our work with Fort Wayne Trails. While we can’t get into our future plans, stay tuned!