Show and Tell: Building Cumberland's Tour de France subsite in just a few days
When people visit a website, they usually only see the finished product. What they don't see is the work that happens behind the scenes to make it accessible, responsive, on-brand and ready for launch.
In this Digital Show and Tell, I walked the team through how we delivered Cumberland Council's new Tour de France subsite in an extremely short timeframe. We were asked on a Friday to create a minimum viable product (MVP) by the following Thursday, giving us less than a week to design, build and launch something that residents, visitors and event organisers could use.
The project was a collaborative effort between the web team and communications colleagues. Alongside creating the site itself, we also needed to develop a completely new subsite theme that aligned with Tour de France branding, ensure everything met accessibility requirements and introduce a countdown timer to build excitement ahead of the event.
One of the most interesting challenges was creating functionality that didn't previously exist within our website platform. We developed a new Tour de France theme that can now be reused for future campaigns and events, giving the council a lasting benefit beyond this single project. The work also included adapting designs for mobile devices, refining colour contrast for accessibility compliance and finding creative solutions that avoided additional licensing costs.
During the session, I demonstrated:
- how we approached the rapid design and build process.
- the creation of the new Tour de France branded subsite theme.
- the countdown timer functionality and how it was implemented.
- accessibility considerations, including colour contrast and mobile responsiveness.
- opportunities for future enhancements such as interactive mapping, road closure information and wider resident engagement features.
What I'm most proud of is that this wasn't just about delivering a website quickly. We've created reusable templates, expanded our technical capability and demonstrated how in-house digital teams can respond rapidly to major events while keeping costs low. As the site evolves over the coming months, there will be plenty of opportunities to add new features and enhance the experience further.
If you'd like to see how the project came together, hear more about the technical challenges we encountered and learn what we discovered along the way, take a few minutes to watch the recording below.
Watch the Digital Show and Tell video to see the full demonstration and discussion