Site of the month is a new feature for our blog where we will feature a Simply Web Services customer and their website.

The site of the month for October 2022 is OCASFriends.org, operated by Friends of Orange County Animal Shelter, a non-profit organization in Orange County, Virginia. Allison Abbs, who is the President of the non-profit organization, contracted SWS in 2019 to build out their first website (built on the WordPress Content Management System).

Allison had already known some of the SWS team as Joe and Crystal (owners of SWS) have adopted four pets (three dogs and one cat) from the Orange County Animal Shelter (OCAS) in the past. Allison keeps Joe and Crystal on “speed dial” as they have adopted several special needs dogs from OCAS.

One such dog was Zeva, Zeva was deaf and partially blind caused by major head trauma and then there was Ginger. Ginger has terminal cancer (expected to live three more months) and had been abandoned by her family, left to die alone in the shelter. Zeva quickly learned sign language and loved her new ability to communicate with her family. Ginger lived a little over a year with Crystal and Joe, before she passed away from her cancer. She loved sleeping on the couch every day and checking things off her bucket list that her new family had made for her. Their current dog, Roxie is also from OCAS, joining the family in 2017.

The all-volunteer group cooperates with the county animal shelter to care for shelter pets and place them in loving, caring, adoptive homes. They enhance the lives of shelter animals and help them find homes.  Their sole purpose is to raise direct support for the Shelter and its important mission of saving lives.

OCASFriends.org is designed and maintained by Simply Web Services, as well as hosted on our fast Linux-based servers. Allison first contracted SWS in 2019, to not only design her first WordPress website but to also host it and to help with Search Engine Optimization (SEO). To save time and money, Allison selected a premade theme from Template Monster and SWS customized it to her exact specifications and requirements, making it unique to OCASFriends.org. SWS had also set up the email-marketing interface on the website so it would tie into the existing email marketing setup (MailChimp) that Friends of Orange County Animal Shelter was already using.

SWS also had taken on the task of integrating the shelter Pet-Finder.com listings into the new website, allowing for live updates to the website every time a Pet-Finder listing was added, updated, or removed. Most of the photos on the OCASFriends.org website were taken by professional photographers who volunteer their time to help these animals find their forever homes. SWS edited these photos to make them ready for the website.

If you are looking for a pet, visit their website at https://OCASFriends.org/ and check out their Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/ocasva/). Shelter pets make the best companions, they are forever thankful for you taking them into your home and loving them.