It’s almost eight years since our old site was first designed and went live. Back in 2014 it was great, but over the years more and more has been added and it was time to start again and rebuild the site to adapt to changing needs and expectations.
We’ve kept the original artwork on the home page, and on the headers of all the other pages, because we felt that it was still fresh and different, and something which made our site stand out from the crowd. The Bayford artwork was originally designed for us by a parent, Andy Williams, from Hertford-based logo and web design agency Balance Creative. We’re really grateful to Andy for allowing us to continue to use his work.
The new site has changed a lot behind the scenes. It’s built on the latest frameworks, with industry standard security, and the latest tweaks to speed up loading time. The site is also now protected by a certificate which ensures that traffic between our server and your device is all encrypted. So no more scary warning messages when you try to access the site!
We’ve also tried to make the site more helpful, with much more information on each page and what we hope is a more logical way of organising the information. We very much hope your experience of the site as a user is better, and that you find it friendly, helpful, and clear. The site is designed around our school colours and a refreshed school logo. Over the next year we’ll also be presenting all our school documents and policies in the new house style, making changes as each one comes up for review.
In case you’re wondering… No, the new site hasn’t cost us anything! Continuing a Bayford tradition that Andy Williams started, the new site has been designed, built, and hosted for us by a volunteer. These days a website is a core service, but we’re able to keep our resources focused on the classroom, where we can make most difference for our children.
It has been hard for us to keep the old site up to date in the last two years, what with school closures, home learning, bubbles and the rest… but we very much hope that we can now fully maintain our site again and keep improving its features.
How you can help
So what else would you like to see on the site? Is there anything we could add or present differently? Would you like, for example, to be able to buy a school tie online, or maybe apply for a nursery place online? Whether you’re a parent, or a member of the wider community, we’d like you to think of this site as yours. If you have any thoughts or ideas please let us know. If it’s technically feasible, we’ll try to add it into our development schedule.