Press Releases
Seattle, WA, May 29, 2007—Seattle Black Pride is proud to present its newly revamped website! The organization
has grown exponentially over the years, and we have had to adjust to keep up with the success. In fact, we have had to update
our website twice in two years—not including the websites for our Annual Black Pride event.
Many things are new in this version. You'll still find the same useful information as in the last version. What you'll
notice is a cleaner design and layout, and many improvements to help you find your way around. As always, we have listened to
your feedback and improved. And we will continue to do that, so please send us mail.
For an exciting glimpse at what's new, read on.
So, What's New?
- More professional look & feel;
- Concise homepage, allowing you to see everything at-a-glance, with the scrolling news and changing pictures;
- New Picture Gallery—with newly added pictures;
- New Search box makes it a breeze to find what you're looking for;
- New Popup menus allow you to gain deeper access into the website;
- Blog for news, events, and press releases that we will update regularly;
- RSS Feeds so you can subscribe to our blog and keep yourself up-to-date;
- New outreach section for our outreach programs, such as Body & Soul;
- Also new: SBP Timeline page and Incentives & Rewards page for sponsors and members.;
- New Site Map—allows you to navigate the structure of the site;
- Website will fit on older computers with smaller screen (800x600)—that's about 15% of you;
- We also made an effort to publish all our past content: previous press releases, newsletter, and pictures;
- Finally, many administrative improvements behind the scenes to make it easier for the SBP Board to publish contents to the website. For you, that means a
better, more up-to-date website!
A Brief History of the Seattle Black Pride Website
For those of you who have been following the story of the Seattle Black Pride website since its beginnings, you know it was very
involved work. And it needs to be. More than 500 people visit the website each month, and that number increases 6-folds during
pride months. People visit our website from all over the world, though mainly in North America and the Carribbean.
While the website is a very important part of the organization's image in Seattle, it is
one of the main ways people outside of Seattle learn about, and keep in touch with, us.
In fact, almost one-in-two visitors to our website connects from outside Washington state!
Hence, here is a quick timeline of our different website designs, and what we learned along the way:
Seattle Black Pride 2005 Website
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Some of you may remember SBP's very first steps on the web.
The first website was released in January 2006. We finally had a way to tell the world we existed. We didn't really know who we
were, so our attempt was rather primitive. One thing was sure: those weren't our colors, or our "style."
We also had a logo. That came pretty quick, we needed a brand.
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Then came April 18th, 2006. Time to update our Website to version 2.0. We were closer to our first Annual Black Pride event, and
were clearer on what the organization needed to represent. We still had flashy colors—though less explosively flashy—but
we still lacked consistency between the Seattle Black Pride brand and the website.
You can see the logo changed on this picture, but the new logo came much later, in October 2006.
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Seattle Black Pride 2006 Website
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Seattle Black Pride 2007 Website
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And here is the website as it is today. The colors are in line with the Seattle Black Pride logo; the design is much cleaner,
and the website much more complete and up-to-date.
Our new logo keeps the same spirit as our original one—nothing was really changed besides brighter colors, and a different font
for the text.
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Conclusion
It is amazing to see how the organization has matured in just two years. Everything Seattle Black Pride does is more. More professional,
more amazing, more compassionate, more effective.
For those of us at SBP since the very beginning, those past versions are a strong reminder. "We were there when this happened."
We were there to witness it; we were there to make it happen. But there is much more this organization can and will do. Sky is
the limit. So it's happening here, and it's happening now... The question you need to ask yourself is: where do you want to be?