Kai Hagen

2006.kaihagen.com

Background:
kaihagen Kai Hagen is a County Commissioner of Frederick County, Maryland. In the spring of 2006 he was running for this position and wanted a professional quality web site that would reflect the values emphasized by his campaign.

He emphasized the need for a navigation system that would be easy to update and would be able to handle the large amount of content that will be introduced as the campaign continues. Coming from a background that includes a newspaper column, Mr. Hagen built a large body of information. He wanted the high level pages to provide an introduction to his ideas for those people with a minimum of time while still linking to "deeper" pages for visitors who have time to learn more.

The process of updating the site had to be quick as a candidate's time is very limited. Also, while Mr. Hagen is in the position of having some experience with HTML, he wanted the option to hand off site updates to staff members who may not have a technical background.

Solution:
The website was created using the latest tools and techniques to satisfy these requirements. OpenCMS was selected as the content management tool. The software was extended in a number of areas to provide the rotating endorsements by citizens, the listing of events, the ability to email a page to a friend, and registration for newsletters. The system allows events to be automatically removed once they have expired. Also contributing to the ease of maintenance, the site is built using XHTML and CSS technology. The graphic design of this site is by Patrice Gallagher. This site hosted on a Red Noodle server. After winning the election, his campaign web site was retired from www.kaihagen.com to 2006.kaihagen.com.