I am very excited to announce the launch of the completely new Aikido Victorian Website at https://aikidomelbourne.org.au/
Our original website was built in 2009 by a former student. He graciously continued to make essential changes as we needed them, even throughout the pandemic. But it’s no surprise that the site itself was sorely in need of modernisation and a content refresh.
To build and modernise the new website, we partnered Cattle Dog Digital, an Australian Professional Services Company. This lightened the load on our volunteers who would then take over maintaining it.
The new site is a clean and contemporary design, featuring the new logo for Aikido Victoria, designed by John Rockstrom Shihan.
For the technically minded, the website uses WordPress with Elementor, the dominant platform set in the SME marketplace. It has full social media integration (Facebook, Instagram, Google Calendar and Google Maps). Links to the Aiki Kai Australia website from a Victorian State perspective have been built in. It is optimised for search engines as much as it can be without paying for ads. Finally, it has a fully responsive design, ensuring it works on any device size, laptop, smartphone, and tablet.
Knowledge and skills transfer to our Aikido Victoria team has been continuous throughout the project. The values alignment of our organisation enabled us to provide employment opportunities to an intern and recent graduate. In return, the new site lays the foundation for us to progress in other Victorian operational areas in the future and evolve the website content as we need it.
I would in particular like to thank Diana Hope and Adrianne Cleaver Leong for volunteering their time to attend the required meetings and workshops with Cattle Dog, in addition to reviewing and updating all the content. It took a lot of work, and now we are equipped with great tools that we need to rebuild the organisation and continue to propagate Aikido everywhere across Victoria.
Wishing you and your loved ones a Happy Holidays, and see you all soon back on the mat!
Regards,
Linda Godfrey
Aikido Victoria State Area Representative