Being responsive may seem like a ridiculous thing to brag about in 2018 but in this case it's warranted. SiteTogether made an early push for mobile friendly browsing. Our first mobile-version was created in early 2011... back when compatibility with Blackberrys was a major concern. At the time mobile browsing was just a weird thing done by early adopters or people in a pinch when they couldn't get to their main computer. That has changed. The mobile site has changed. We've made plenty of updates to the mobile site over the years. What was once almost an experimental set of mobile features evolved to become nearly an exact copy of the main site. In short, having a separate mobile version of the site just doesn't make as much sense as it used to.
We've known that a responsive design was going to be the future of SiteTogether for years. The arguments for having a separate mobile site don't really exist anymore and the arguments for a responsive structure are getting more compelling. We decided the time was right at the end of 2017 and began working on the initial design.
We always strive for clean and elegant solutions but we also don't want to leave anyone behind. Afterall, YMCA's aren't supposed to exclude anyone... even those with older web browsers. :) So as a policy, we don't pursue bleeding edge technology for SiteTogether. However, we've been able to hit the sweet spot on a few new pieces of technology that are well supported. In several places we've been able abandon old JavaScripts in favor of pure CSS alternatives. We've also replaced tables (class schedules primarily) with css grid layout. The css grid let us do very cool things with reordering data for mobile consumption.
This is the biggest design change since 2014 so we're pretty excited! If you'd like more information about the new layout or if you'd like to see a live demo, please get in touch!
News and updates for the SiteTogether web management system.
