Scuba diving, tracking, and emergency medical treatment are just some of the skills that Flathead County Search and Rescue (FCSR) brings to the rugged wilderness of northwestern Montana. Founded in 1947, the FCSR team has extended its lifesaving work to the Internet in the form of public outreach, education, ongoing training, and fundraising.

Recently, FCSR turned to Hillary Smith, Web designer at Pixel Solutions, to redesign the organization's Web site. Although the original site was adequate, Smith and the FCSR team decided to refocus the site to attract corporate sponsors and present a more professional image to visitors. "The redesign positions the site to serve both the general public and team members," Smith explains, "because it simultaneously serves as a public relations tool and online information base."

The improved user interface, images, and streamlined look have helped attract new traffic to the site, driving up both fundraising and membership efforts. "The redesign has led to an increase in both corporate sponsorship and new member applications," says Smith.

Web site requirements

Smith saw the process of retooling the site as an opportunity to highlight FCSR accomplishments for the general public, while improving access to information on training and classes for team members. Building a site for both audiences required the inclusion of a variety of information.

For example, when a local television news program aired a short piece on the team's use of highly trained tracking dogs, Smith wanted to include this and other press coverage on the home page. Smith also needed to include Microsoft Office Word 2003 and Microsoft Office Excel 2003 documents. Another important requirement for the new site was the ability to easily manage future updates, while maintaining a consistent look and feel.

FrontPage features

Although Smith originally coded her pages in Microsoft Notepad, she moved to FrontPage 2003 because it was best suited to her Web development and ongoing site management projects.

"We used the Included Content Web component, which saved us time when updating navigation site-wide," says Smith, "and the Web reporting functionality helped us stay on top of such items as broken links and slow loading pages."

Smith employed the Insert Web Component dialog box to include Flash and other multimedia plug-ins where they were needed.

For FCSR, all desired file types were easily integrated using FrontPage 2003. Smith was able to include Excel 2003 and Word 2003 documents by using their Save as Web Page features.

In the future, Smith says, FCSR plans to improve fundraising efforts on the site with the help of the Microsoft bCentral Commerce Manager Add-in. This FrontPage add-in will help the team to merchandise, update, and manage a fully functional online store. FCSR also plans to introduce threaded discussions to provide an active forum for team members.

Pixel Solutions now uses FrontPage 2003 for all its Web development projects. "FrontPage features allow us to deliver reliable, good-looking content that is easy to integrate and manage," says Smith.

Additional tools

• Microsoft Office Excel 2003
• Microsoft Office Word 2003