Sandvox Website Profile: “Orange County International Goshin Kai Karate School”

The Orange County International Goshin Kai (OCIGK) web site is made for current, former and future students of the OCIGK traditional Goju Ryu Karate School in Irvine, Orange County California.

The OCIGK has provided quality martial arts instruction in Orange County since 1982. Founded by Kyoshi Roy Cadiente, IGK instructs students of all ages — from ages four through adult.

Instruction for younger students is focused on developing strong and honorable leaders equipped with skills for success and self-protection. Adult instruction focuses on the development of physical and mental strength, coordination, and the skills to protect self and others in all situations.

The web site informs all students and parents of any upcoming events or school news, class information, schedule and registration. Photos and videos from past events are also posted for people to enjoy. The web site also contains informational information pertaining to the training in Goju Ryu karate.

The information in this site is intended to be informative as well as inspirational. We hope that it is a valued resource not only for our own students, but for all students of the martial arts.

Target audience is current, former, and future students and parents of karate.

Most martial arts websites are now well designed. I hope that on first visit to ocigk.com, it will feel professional and inspiring. It is also a place where a lot of information on the art form as well as class information is provided.

I first build the website using Yahoo!s Site Builder application. I built the site while employed at Y! so I wanted to "eat our own dog food" and give some feedback to the YSB people. I quickly found myself using a lot of open source code for things like photo galleries and videos. That ended up being a bit of a maintenance nightmare, especially when I had to remember how I implemented it. And I had problems incorporating a website that also includes blog/news/announcement section that I could update easily. Also, being an avid Mac user, I had to keep an old Windows laptop around just to update the site.

So I was looking to rebuild the entire site using a better web design program that was built for a Mac.

I am glad that the new Kryptonite design came out. I was looking for a black background themed design that has at least one large area and a small gutter. I really like how you can easily add custom areas in the gutter for every page.

I didn't do anything too fancy in order to keep it maintainable in the future. However I did add a custom HTML table for the class registration page. Also, the site is using the blogs but as a secondary item to the main web site.