Creating a Digital Community

Celebrating 200 Years of Oneness

Last year we launched a website for one of our favorite clients, the Bahá’ís of the United States. Since then, we have continued to help evolve the site as the religion and community continue to grow. 

On October 29th & 30th, 2019, Bahá’ís from around the world will celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of the Bab, the Prophet-Herald of the Bahá’í Faith. To help document and share these festivities, the Bahá’í team in Evanston asked us to create a new experience on their website. The goal: to engage their community with photos, videos, podcasts, and blog posts from the celebrations in a live feed. 

Sharing Experiences

The Bahá’í Faith was built on principles of inclusivity and oneness. We wanted to create a space for the community to share their own experiences and feel a part of the celebrations no matter where they were in the world. We started with wireframes, mapping out a blueprint of where content would live on the site and how users could interact with it. Because we originally built the site in WordPress, we were afforded the flexibility to add an entirely new sub-section to the existing Stories page. This included creating a new template, adding a Bicentenary section to the sub navigation, creating a new tag for posts, and reworking the homepage to feature upcoming content. 

This project heavily focused on user experience and required quite a bit of strategic thought. The flow of content needed to be up-to-date, easy to follow, and exciting—all while embodying the energy and spirit of the celebration. In the end, we’re proud to say we created a feed that allows both the Bahá’í team and the community to post quick pieces of content such as photos or videos that appear in a Lightbox when clicked on, or longer form stories (whether audio or text) that people can click through to. 

Future Thinking

Knowing that the Bicentenary page will eventually be archived, we built the section as a template so that it could be easily adapted and repurposed for future content on the site. Once the Bicentenary is over, the content will not disappear entirely. Instead, it will live on through the 2019 Bicentenary tag, which will be easily searchable for any user wanting to experience the celebrations long after they’re done.  

As always, it was a delight working with the Bahá’í team, and we never pass up an opportunity to flex our creative muscles. Working within the confines of a website we created, we were able to make their content come to life in a way that’s not only easily accessible but also connects their global community.

Visit their website and submerge yourself in the experience, or explore our case study on the initial website process.