Department Website

[ed2brute]

I'm not a member of our county's volunteer FD, but I think they have a nice site: http://www.bcfdmo.com/

[buckeyedoc]

I'm not a member of our county's volunteer FD, but I think they have a nice site: http://www.bcfdmo.com/

That is a very nice site. Although the background is black, all of the graphics work with it. Very nice. I am impressed that the flames at the top are static and not animated. Very well done.

Doc

[Punisher]

I'm not a member of our county's volunteer FD, but I think they have a nice site: http://www.bcfdmo.com/

Nice site, crappy department- I used to be a resident volunteer for them when I worked for University of Missouri. They don't treat their people well at all and their chief ran off some of the best fire officers they had (including one of the finest fire officers I've ever had the pleasure of knowing).

[Medic One]

I am the web master for our company, check ours out: www.campionambulance.com

go to template monster then search fire for some cool templates

[Rescue0ne]

Glad to see some good websites out there.

I'm a Web Developer, in addition to an EMS administrator, and I design & host websites for non-profit Fire/Rescue/EMS in Virginia. I won't go into my educator mode in the thread, but there are a few small bits of advice that I feel are important.

Some things to keep in mind when designing FIRE/EMS websites.

[*]Sounds - Don't have audio files automatically open when a user visits your site. If you so desire, offer a link or button where they may listen, but NEVER force it upon them.

[*]Menus - As it was said in a previous post, left side menus are best. Don't try to get TOO terribly fancy, unless you're an experienced developer. It's often not worth all the trouble.

[*]Images - If you plan on having many images on the same page, always have a thumbnail present on the page, and link it to a larger image that will open up on a different full-sized page, or same browser window. Try not to use pop-up windows, as many folks have pop-up blockers, and may not feel like adding your site to their safe-list, or turning it off just to view your picture.

[*]Email addresses - If you post contact email addresses on your site, ALWAYS make them spam/robot/etc safe. Use images, or ascii coding to allow them to display, don't just type them into the website builder, or the html scripting. Your officers & members will definitely appreciate the effort to keep them spam-free.

[*]Sounds - Did I already mention this? Well, it's important. If someone has their speakers ALL THE WAY UP...and all o' a sudden, your dispatch tones, or theme song, or what-have-you start blaring at them from their desktop, it will definitely not leave them with a warm, fuzzy feeling. Take it from someone who has viewed thousands of Fire/Rescue pages. I really really despise that, and I know most feel the same way. God forbid, if your state Fire or EMS association has a Website Contest, that will definitely make your Dept's. site FAIL

Having said all this...GOOD LUCK! Look forward to seeing you on the web!