For about seven years (2015 -2021) I designed just about everything that went through Downtown Bentonville Inc. They are a nonprofit in It was so much fun and I learned the best ways to do so many things. I'm never satisfied with something that seems like it should be simpler. Using Webflow I was able to build a fantastic, custom website AND part of it was wrapped in an app wrapper so we could publish changes on the app instantly using Webflow. Thats pretty cool! I was amazed it worked! that only saved my job hours of work.
I did a lot. Understand that I had to design and print things constantly and update a website that needed new event pages. I updated the most extensive community calendar in Bentonville and took photos of new every new business that popped up in town. Most importantly the site had to look and feel awesome and it sure did.
I was able to do the job of a designer, coder, printer, photographer, and videographer for event after event... only because I use the right tools! Webflow is the tool that perfectly combined al those skills. Let me tell you all my tricks!
We needed the whole towns events in one place. So it had to be easier for them to add them and even more importantly easy for me to find them all and add them. Of course in the end if you create a community anything - it will ultimately fall on your shoulders. So now we have bentonvilleevents.com - one massive community calendar. By using Event Calendar App, Webflow and Paperform everyone can submit events easily with very little maintenance on DBI's end. I can add events to it just by clicking that I'm interested on Facebook and the event is pulled straight to a google calendar thats connected to Event Calendar App. Paperform is a simple form editor that can do a lot, it's the easiest. I created this form alert me of new places.
I was hesitant to have so many links in the chain, but it's been running well for two years now! I've tried "Event Calendar" on a Wordpress site and that's a nightmare. Don't even go there. There's always an easy solution if you just keep looking. This option took me two years of digging and trying things before I found it. So be patient if you must.
I wanted to list every business in Downtown with directions, images, and information about them. The Explore page organizes it all into categories making it easy to find all the restaurants, parks, art galleries and more. It was quite the task. I took 95% of the images you see as well, so I got lots of practice under my belt now.
Applications are a big part of it too so we signed up with Paperform to build kick butt forms that everyone can manage and they tie into the website seamlessly.
They have a ton of events and each one needs pretty much a one page website. I put them all into one dynamic page that shows and hides tons of different info based on which event is selected. It looks very clean and runs fast!
As if that's not cool enough, I was also able to create an app that uses at the data in the Explore collections, allowing the app to be updated when the website is. The website is very mobile responsive, but an app feels different, so I just created it from scratch to look and feel like one. Really it's just four pages of the website that are only linked to each other, but you'd never know. Download it to check it out.
Currently not in use, but you can see an old version here.
Social Media seems like a bit of a time waster for a business. How about I spend that time making you a kick-butt site instead? (Yeah!)
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