A members area and public site for 1,671 hectares of Dartmoor

What the site is

HUG Commons is the website for the Harford and Ugborough Commoners’ Association, which manages 1,671 hectares of unfenced moorland on Dartmoor’s southern edge. The site does two jobs. It’s a public guide to the commons, covering conservation, heritage, commoning practices and ongoing land management projects, and it’s a secure members area where the association’s commoners find documents, newsletters and resources.

The challenge

The association needed a website that could serve two distinct audiences: the general public (with information about the commons, its ecology, heritage sites and conservation projects) and the association’s members (with a private, secure area for sharing documents, meeting minutes and resources). The system had to be easy for non-technical administrators to manage, with automatic notifications when new documents were added. They also needed full copywriting support, with content written from scratch.

What I built

Custom members area. A bespoke members-only section with document management, whitelisted user access control, and automatic email notifications whenever new documents are uploaded. Non-technical administrators add members, upload documents and manage access themselves.

Public-facing site. Full design and build covering the commons’ conservation work, heritage (74 scheduled monuments, 344 recorded historic sites), commoning practices and project pages. The homepage features key statistics and a clear visual hierarchy.

Four numbers, high on the homepage, that tell a visitor what this place actually is.

Copywriting. All website content and news articles written from scratch, working closely with the association to accurately represent their work and the landscape.

Explaining commoning to somebody who has never heard the word is a writing job before it’s a design one.

SEO and analytics. Google Analytics, Yoast SEO and Google Search Console configured for tracking and discoverability.

Infrastructure. DNS, SSL and email configuration.

This project is a template for other commoners’ associations and similar community organisations: the custom membership and document system could be deployed for other commons using the same framework.