After 10 years the Academia deserves a new website

With loving attention to detail, we have been working on the redesign of this website for several months. We enjoyed this project and are satisfied with the result, thanks to the good cooperation with the web designer Cristian Eslava ceslava.com, a very professional web designer who offers efficient and friendly support. Today we can say “We’re done!” and invite you to submit your comments and suggestions. The new elements of the website are:

  • The header
  • The menus (complete menu, quick menu and coloured menu for target groups)
  • The presentation of the Spanish courses in different colours for each target group
  • The integration of the English courses and German courses in the Spanish version of the website
  • The integration of the blog in the website
  • The new photos
  • … We have certainly forgotten something…

What do you think of the new website? What suggestions for improvement do you have? Please leave your comment at the bottom of this post, we surely appreciate it.

The history of Academia Pradoventura’s webseite in pictures

2004

Unfortunately, we have no screnshot of the first website. We created it in Dreamweaver with the invaluable help of a Spanish friend who learned German in Frankfurt and worked as a translator for video games into Spanish. The site was very beautiful and had lots of decorative details, such as wooden frames around the photos. The problem was that every time when we wanted to update some contents, the entire website had to be re-uploaded and broken links were generated. When another friend told us of the benefits of a CMS (Content Management System), we listened attentively and finally were convinced primarily by the argument that you could change and update content on the fly. For the sake of functionality we had to do without the graphic details of the first page.

2005

This was the header of the website of Academia Pradoventura with our first logo (created by us) and the photo of Prado del Rey with the Sierra de Cádiz in the background. The website was created in phpwcms, an open source CMS with reduced features, but it kept its promise in terms of the updating content easily. Header de la web 2005

2008

Here you can see the header after the redesign in 2008. We used the same colours and the same logo but adapted the page width to wider screens and instead of the photo of Prado del Rey it showed a collage with impressions of Prado del Rey. The page was created in Typolight (which was renamed in Contao later), an open source CMS born in 2006 that had more functionalities than phpwcms. Webseite der Sprachschule Academia Pradoventura 2008

2010

Now it was time to modernize our logo, so we designed a new one, in collaboration with the graphic designer Antonio Cózar and added it to the header. After a course about blogging with WordPress we created our first blog and linked it to the website. At that moment we felt like doing a complete redesign of the website but we thought the project would still need to mature. Webseite der Srpachschule Academia Pradoventura 2010

2013

We have taken 3 years to mature the redesign project and we are convinced that it was the right descision. The current website is created in WordPress with a theme especially designed for us that includes the graphic elements of our printed placards and flyers. We are delighted by the possibilities that WordPress offers to integrate the blog and the website, by the intuitive operation and the useful plugins. Aktuelle Webseite der Sprachschule Academia Pradoventura

4 Responses to “After 10 years the Academia deserves a new website”

    • [email protected]

      Gracias Cristian por tus palabras y el enlace donde se ve la evolución de la web. Es curioso que el origen de nuestra colaboración haya sido el curso de “Hazte blogger profesional”.
      ¡El placer es nuestro! Estamos en contacto 😉

      Reply
  1. Nicki Defago

    Hi Anja —

    This looks fantastic!! Really, really good, I have spent half an hour looking through and enjoying all the places we have been to together.

    The site has a lovely ‘feel’ about it and the section that says ‘why choose Prado del Rey’ – is really convincing – and true.
    It makes me want to be there!

    Really well done to you and Jose Luis – I can see the work you’ve put into it and it has been worth it.

    Reply
  2. Maria Meisner

    Liebe Anja,

    Gratulation zu Eurer neuen Webseite, ich sehe, Ihr habt eine sehr vielfältige interessante Zukunft vor Euch!

    Liebe Grüße an Euch beide,

    Maria

    Reply

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