DoubtAboutWill.org
Purpose
The Shakespeare Authorship Coalition wanted a platform to serve two purposes: first, to educate the public about its mission, and second, to collect signatures in support of its Declaration of Reasonable Doubt about the identity of William Shakespeare.
Look and feel
I wish I could say that I designed this site from the ground up, but I did not. The original mockups for the front page, an inside page, the declaration, and the historical doubters page were all done by a graphic designer the coalition had previously worked with. The graphic designer and I worked a little bit on making his design more web-friendly, and then I did the typography and additional page layouts as needed, keeping the look and feel consistent. I feel that the site reflects very well on the society, and truly sets them apart from their peers, giving them an aura of professionalism that is necessary given the battle they are trying to fight.
Site features
The site has a basic CMS, custom-built, and a back-end application to collect and handle the signatures. These are fully validated on input, then automatically address verified before being human-verified. Once they clear that step, they await publication during one of the coalition’s 4 yearly publishing dates. The entire application, including the CMS, was written in Ruby on Rails for rapid development, quick roll-out, and reduced costs.
Live page: The coalition’s home page
Brodiaea howellii (Themidaceae); Bicolor cluster lily
