My goodness how time flies. The first Natural Exposures website appeared clear back in 1996. Around 2006 we rebuilt our web presence to what you see today. Now we’re in the process of completely changing it all once again and I thought I would share this process with you.

Amazing tools have been developed since 1996 and actually most of those tools have come along since our last redesign in 2006. It’s now easier to work with more beautiful and interesting  layouts that give you a custom website that not only looks good but can also be changed and updated exceptionally quick and easy. The new Natural Exposures web experience is being built with the same system I use for this blog, WordPress. As many of you know, I mostly keep the blog up-to-date, down times usually occur when I’m in the boonies with no access to the Internet. Overall I try to keep things fresh and informational. This is only possible due to the extraordinarily easy interface that WordPress employs and I’m really excited about having these capabilities on our new website.

Philip Downer of Manifest Creative showing Dan and Kristie the newest ideas for the redesigned website for Natural Exposures, Inc. Bozeman, Montana

For those who might have an interest in building a website with WordPress you have a lot of options. We chose a WordPress theme company called StudioPress. We also decided not to try to do this ourselves. Over about a 6 month period I searched the net high and low for a quality company to help us build our site, and I finally settled on a great little web design and marketing firm called Manifest Creative just down the road in Belgrade, Montana. Philip Downer has been exceptional in his design work, knowledge of WordPress and his customer service. I have to say that having Manifest Creative so close to our studio was a big benefit over others we considered. What a pleasure it’s been to have a designer/programmer close at hand when we’re trying to communicate ideas.

Kristie working on design elements of our new website in the Natural Exposures office in Bozeman, Montana.

One of the toughest decisions I had to make when we started this process was to bring our web design and programming team closer to home. For nearly ten years we’ve been working with the great crew of Bio Design Works in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Darcy Hastings has been exceptional in his commitment to make our web presence a quality experience for both our visitors as well as my studio staff who needed the ability to make changes easily if needed. I’ll always be indebted to Darcy for his great service and quality ideas.

Times have moved ahead and we’re now building our new site on completely different and much easier-to-use technology. With the help of Philip from Manifest Creative and Kristie Peck, our newest intern from the design department of Montana State University, we hope to have one heck of a great experience for all of our Internet viewers when they visit the new Natural Exposures website. The overall design of our new site will be Adventure Travel, Photography Tours centric. In other words, it’s going to be targeted to the adventure traveler who wants to learn how to use a camera and become a better photographer. It is not targeted to the professional photographer. I’m not sure why so many people think professional photographers are the people we want to travel with. I hear from potential guests, quite frequently, that they think they have to be professional to travel with us. You don’t. In fact it’s just the opposite. We want those who are just learning, have small cameras (big cameras welcome too) and are eager to have a good time. Believe me, I know professional photographers, including myself, and I can promise you professional photographers are generally painful to deal with. They don’t make good travel companions; that’s the reason Tanya is always part of our team, to make sure she keeps me semi-warm and fuzzy. Our photography tours are designed for those who want to travel and feel like they’ve been on vacation, are eager to learn about photography and most of all have an interest in sharing life changing experiences through the wildly exciting places we travel to for the sake of taking pictures.

Some of the new sections on our redesigned website include:

• Dan’s Trading Post. This will be a place where traveling guests of our invitational photography tours can advertise their used photography equipment free of charge. The idea is to give our guests a place to post their used gear for others to see. The sale of the equipment will be between the person who owns the gear and the person interested in buying. We won’t take any commission of any kind. Our only interest is in connecting people to help them sell their unwanted/needed camera equipment, so they can buy new camera equipment. Gotta love that. Who doesn’t want new gear?

• Tanya’s Travel Corner. Here you will find things that Tanya has learned over the many years of travel she’s put under her belt. She may even let me post a thing or two. You’ll find travel tips like where to get the best deal on Probiotics that we regularly take to fend off intestinal bugs in places like India, Africa and South America. Tanya’s also a great cook and she loves learning about new recipes of traditional foods from around the world. So expect a receipt or two now and again. Lots of possibilities for this section.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 25th, 2012 at 7:00 am and is filed under News Worthy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.