The Ellis Feed
A local news website built and operated by Oktona, including design, development, infrastructure, and ongoing content management.
The Ellis Feed is a local digital news platform covering news of Ellis County. Built on Oktona News Platform, it delivers timely updates on local government, schools, new businesses, events, and community stories. Oktona developed and designed the platform and continues to manage and publish content on a daily basis.
A Clearer Local News Identity
The Ellis Feed logo was designed to feel direct, modern, and easy to recognize across digital platforms.
Instead of using a traditional gothic newspaper style, we moved toward a bold tabloid-inspired direction with uppercase lettering and a clear, high-impact font. This helped the brand feel more current, more accessible, and better suited for readers who want local updates without a heavy political or legacy-newspaper tone.
The result is a news identity that feels familiar, but not dated.
A Color Rooted In Place
The primary brand color was chosen as a visual reference to the historic Ellis County Courthouse in Waxahachie.
Texas courthouses are an important part of the state's visual identity. Many are distinct in material, color, and architectural character, giving each county a recognizable civic landmark. For The Ellis Feed, this color creates a local connection without making the brand feel old-fashioned.
It gives the site warmth, recognition, and a sense of place.
A Simple Grid For Comfortable Reading
The website was designed around a clean, practical content grid.
The layout makes it easy to separate major stories, ongoing local updates, and evergreen articles that may stay relevant for longer periods of time. This structure helps readers scan quickly while still giving important stories stronger visual weight.
The design keeps the focus on the content, not unnecessary decoration.
Bluebonnets
Bluebonnets are the Texas state flower, and Ennis (located in Ellis County) is officially designated as the Bluebonnet City of Texas and home of the Official Texas Bluebonnet Trail.
We created an alternate brand background using a real bluebonnet photo taken in Ellis County during bluebonnet season.
The photo was heavily processed into an abstract visual asset. It is used for social media graphics, the back of business cards with a QR code, and website sections designed to keep long-term featured articles visible.
Designed For Local Events
We designed business cards that can be handed out at public events, local gatherings, and community activities.
One challenge was balancing the county-wide name with the strong city-level identity many residents have. Ellis County includes communities with their own local pride, but listing every city cleanly on a small card was not practical.
To solve this, we used a layout where some city names appear naturally cropped or partially visible. This makes the design feel intentional rather than incomplete, and avoids the impression that any specific city was forgotten.
The card connects the county-wide brand to the local communities it covers.
Built On Our Own Platform
The Ellis Feed runs on our own Oktona News Platform, built for speed, scalability, and easy day-to-day publishing.
The platform is optimized for strong performance, accessibility, and a clean reading experience across desktop and mobile. It's built to handle frequent updates, growing traffic, and long-term expansion.
The front end is built with Vue.js framework and enhanced with custom-built hydration functionality to deliver fast page loads and smooth navigation without sacrificing SEO or reliability.
Orange News Platform
A headless SaaS CMS built for modern newsrooms and content-driven businesses.
Vue.js
Front-end framework for building interactive application interfaces.
AWS
Cloud infrastructure for hosting, storage, and managed application services.
Serverless
IaC framework for building, deploying, and managing applications on serverless computing platforms.
Measured Performance
99
Performance
95
Accessibility
96
Best Practices
100
SEO
Measured via Lighthouse — an open-source automated tool developed by Google to measure web page quality. Results may vary depending on testing conditions.
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