In its first year of competition, Bit-Wizards, a leading provider of custom software solutions and website design in the Southeast, received an ADDY® Award at the 2010 District ADDY® Awards Ceremony presented by the Emerald Coast Ad Federation.
The Silver ADDY® Award recognizes excellence in web design work for consumer HTML WebSites.
FORT WALTON BEACH, Florida (March 15, 2010) – In its first year of competition, Bit-Wizards, a leading provider of custom software solutions and website design in the Southeast, received an ADDY® Award at the 2010 District ADDY® Awards Ceremony presented by the Emerald Coast Ad Federation.[Addy]Bit-Wizards brought home a Silver ADDY® in the Interactive Media category for the website developed for the Eglin Air Force Base Aero Club (www.eglinaeroclub.com). Web designer Michael Whalen and software engineer Bryan Soltis worked approximately 2 months to design and program the site which launched late summer of 2009. The website will now be submitted to compete in the American Advertising Federation’s Regional ADDY® Competition.
The Eglin Aero Club website is a dynamic, data-driven site built using the powerful and feature-rich Kentico CMS content management system (www.KenticoCMS.com). Built on Microsoft's ASP.NET platform, Kentico allows multiple website administrators the ability to quickly edit and maintain content and images.
"We really appreciate the programming and creative design that Bit-Wizards did to create our site. It is no surprise to me that the design won an Addy Award," said Don Riedel Manager, Eglin Aero Club.
“Our design group has outstanding creative capabilities and it’s great to see them get the recognition they deserve,” said Vince Mayfield, Bit-Wizards President.
The features of this website required Bit-Wizards to develop many custom applications within Kentico to enable the ease of maintenance for site administrators. This included the development of a notification system that automatically calculates the date for the second Thursday of each month to display the "Safety Meeting" notice. An override feature allows the site administrator to manually enter a date if needed. Other features of the site include a interactive forum, integrated location Bing map, aircraft catalog with a "float box" photo gallery, and integration with
FlightSchedulePro.
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The Kentico CMS that it is built on is very intuitive and so easy even a novice can use it to update the site" said Don Riedel Manager, Eglin Aero Club.
The Eglin Aero Club is the second largest flying club in the USAF. The Eglin Aero Club is part of the 96th Force Support Squadron, at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, who is responsible for Morale, Welfare, Recreation, and Services programs for the USAF Members and their dependents. All active, reserve, guard, and retired military, their dependents, DOD civilians, and NAF employees are eligible for membership in the Aero Club. Aero Clubs are one of the leading Quality of Life programs – and the safest venue for learning to fly, or flying, light general aviation aircraft. USAF Aero clubs are much safer than many civilian flying clubs because they provide a very professional structure to learn and maintain flying proficiency. They offer patrons an opportunity to learn to fly, continue in their aviation education, and maintain critical flying skills, all within a framework to ensure their safety record remains the best in the industry.
"Our new web site provides us the ability to reach out and provide services to military and civilian personnel serving at military installations all around the world as well as our members at Eglin. This past Christmas, we were able to help a member's wife get a gift certificate for her husband who was returning from a deployment to Iraq." said Don Riedel Manager, Eglin Aero Club.
The Eglin Aero Club is unique in that it is an FAA part 141 approved flight training school, that can provide training for Private Pilot, Instrument Certificates, Multi-engine Ratings, Commercial Pilot Certificates, and Airline Transport Pilot Ratings. All of their Flight Instructors are highly trained professionals, who are all FAA certified, many of whom have thousands of hours of military and civilian flight time. The Aero Club has a fleet of 11 aircraft, including two multi-engine C-310s.
The ADDY® Awards Competition is the advertising industry’s largest and most representative competition for creative excellence, with more than 60,000 entries for the national competition each year. It is a three-tiered competition conducted annually by the American Advertising Federation (AAF).