The Norwegian Garrison Website

Norwegian Garrison has been without a website ever since we changed our name, but we finally launched the new site this Friday.

Norwegian Garrison – 501st Legion Norway
URL: norwegiangarrison.no

I would love to hear your thoughs! I’ve put in a few hours of work into that site.

Our CO had asked me a few times if I could help out. At first I didn’t want to take on the project, but I finally caved in and reluctantly said yes. Norwegian Garrison had now been without a site for several months, so it felt urgent to get a new site up and running.

I had a meeting with our Web Liason and Sosial Media manager, and got to work.

We didn’t want to build upon our previous site. We also knew we wanted the main language of the site to be Norwegian since most of our audience is in Norway. So our old Nordic Garrison content had to go and I started with a blank slate.

The first thing I did was to research other garrisons in the Legion, all of which can be found on the “Unit Listings” page on the main site: https://www.501st.com/members/displayUnits.php

Most garrison sites were OK. Some were inaccessible at the moment of my visit. A few looked really old and outdated. I chose the ten sites that looked and worked the best for our purpose. These were, in no perticular order:

I then gathered information about what type of platform, design and functionality these had, and used this as an inspiration and springboard for our own site.

After landing the design and functionality, I wrote some a few pages of content.

The most challenging part was to make the site multilingual. Norway has two official written languages, Bokmål and Nynorsk. And since Norwegian Garrison want to be a truly Norwegian Garrison, it was only natural to make the site in both of these languages. I also know that we get visitors from all over the world, so an English version was also preferred.

I’ve experimented with two languages here on my own site TK32700.com, but three was that much more difficult. Especially to make it work with some of the more advanced features on the front page. But it seems to be working. You’ll find the language option in the top menu under the (globe) icon.

Screenshot of the top menu on NorwegianGarrison.no

I’m always on the hunt for improvements in my projects, and have already started thinking about adding a fourth language, Northern Sámi. That would be so awesome! But I don’t know that language, so I am sadly unable to translate it myself.

We don’t have much content yet on our new site. My goal was to get the site up and running ASAP, answering the questions Who, What, Where, How: