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nelax,comwww.nelax.com

Founded in November 2004 by a pair of local lacrosse legends, nelax.com has been a rousing success through its first year. Aimed at high school and college-aged lacrosse players and fans, nelax.com has quickly become the "go to" source for news and notes about lacrosse in New England.

The clients had 2 of the most important assets necessary to start a successful vertical portal: passion and knowledge of their market. They also had some specific ideas about content and features, as well as some preliminary ideas about the site's look and feel. After nearly a year of planning and research, the nelax.com team selected AbleWave to help them bring their concepts to fruition.

The Challenge: Web-Based Content Management

nelax evolution
It all starts with a client's idea - and turns into reality
Any successful community relies heavily on a variety of members and administrators - nelax.com is no different. The site's founders, Keene State College lacrosse coach Mark Theriault and Amherst College coach Tom Carmean, needed to be able to manage their site from anywhere. In addition, their vision included adding "editors" and "managers" to contribute articles, game scores and interviews. Consequently, a system with highly secure user roles and permissioning was a must.

Since their content - like their players - came in all shapes and sizes, they required a content management system which could handle a wide variety of content types through one familiar administrative interface. A modular architecture would also be requird so that additional features could be added and managed the site evolved.

Complete with "community" features such as a photo gallery, discussion forums, polls and more, nelax is also the official home of the New England Intercollegiate Lacrosse Assocation (NEILA) College Rankings.

In order to help fund the site, an ad banner system was also put into place. Clicks can be counted and statistics reported for banner performance.