Focus
The Prince of Wales's website is relaunched
20th November 2006
Video downloads, free updates and a children's zone are all brand new features of The Prince of Wales’s website which was re-launched today.
To mark the event, Clarence House has made a short film called "Away day" which charts the progress of The Prince and his wife, The Duchess of Cornwall, as they carry out a series of visits in and around Birmingham.
It is hoped that, in time, more films will be added: for example edited versions of interviews or major speeches.
Other innovations in the new site – which has been redesigned by the award-winning Soho based company Reading Room - include the ability for subscribers to receive updates on those topics and issues which they are most interested in and a new children’s area which includes games, puzzles and facts and figures about The Prince and his family.
The new site also includes, for the first time, case studies of people or projects that have been helped by charities supported or founded by The Prince of Wales, The Duchess of Cornwall, Prince William and Prince Harry. Reading Room’s co-founder and managing director Margaret Manning, whose team worked closely with the Clarence House Press Office on the redesign, said today: "This has been a very exciting project for us to work on. The old website was very popular but needed updating and refreshing.
We saw our job as very much retaining all the best aspects of the old site while at the same time improving accessibility, navigation, and embracing the very latest technology."
Launched in 1998, www.princeofwales.gov.uk has grown into a very popular website, attracting over 74 million page impressions in the year 1st April 2005 to 31st March 2006.
The site will continue to contain up-to-date news and information on all the public events and initiatives with which The Prince of Wales, The Duchess of Cornwall, Prince William and Prince Harry are involved.
Such news stories are many and varied and include, for example, The Duchess walking in the wind and rain to raise money for the National Osteoporosis Society in Scotland, and Prince William’s recent visit to open an new unit at St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington, London where both he and his brother were born.
As well as an extensive news archive from 2003 onwards there is also a comprehensive database of The Prince’s speeches and articles from the past five decades and an extensive picture gallery, with a wide range of images dating back to the birth of The Prince of Wales in 1948.
Click here to watch the video.