Challenge
Following Amtrak's celebration campaign for their 40th Anniversary, the History of America's Railroad website was in need of an update.
Developed by Stratacomm, a full-service strategic communications firm located in Washington, D.C., this latest version of the Amtrak History website features a brighter and more inviting design.
Six Feet Up was tasked to implement the new look, replace old data with fresher images and content, and roll out changes that promote blog posts to visitors.
Implementation Details
The new design for the Amtrak History site called for an interactive slideshow presenting images with rich text and multiple links to site content. Six Feet Up made this possible by extending the popular Plone slideshow product, EasySlideshow, and using it to manage the display of links and buttons in the slides.
The new design puts the emphasis on Amtrak's blog. As a result, the lower half of the centerfold has been updated to feature teaser information about recent blog entries.
In addition, Six Feet Up implemented a custom blog template that supports embedded videos for a richer experience.
Finally, the ubiquitous "ShareThis" feature was added to the blog post template to allow visitors to easily share stories with their favorite social media networks.
Looking to make their content more attractive, Amtrak asked that their archives section display an image next to each entry, whether it is a blog post, a PDF file, an image or a video file. Six Feet Up addressed this request through an upgrade step by creating a new Dexterity behavior to handle the preview image.
Results
With an emphasis on blogs, everyone can easily learn more about Amtrak's history.
