By Michiel van der Blonk

The site of Fundacion Autismo took some thinking, before we had a good navigation structure. A standard process for any CaribMedia made website is that we first think about what's important for a client to put in the site. After that has been established we continue with a design. This phased process prevents many (costly!) mistakes.

The foundation at first opted for a picture gallery, but during meetings we found out that a forum would do much more for a community of parents and family members of autistic children.

The site language was another issue to deal with. Having a site in three languages (as first opted for) is a major undertaking, since every piece of content needs to be translated in two more languages. Later FAA decided it was best to have one main language and add articles in other languages as they go. This way not everything needs to be translated right away.

An interesting first for us is the slideshow in the left sidebar under the navigation. Instead of relying on Flash it uses javascript. The slideshow code comes from a WordPress plugin, but CaribMedia is capable enough to fix issues and work with the plugin developers to tailor these to the needs of the client.