2013-09-23, Website(s) Plan

2013-09-23 meeting to discuss website plans for Sagamore Hills Elementary School.  Attended by Dave Barker & John Lenz.

• View a recording of the meeting
• Sagamore online meetings of Sagamore Hills online

Take Away

We will wait to see what the new DeKalb County School’s school website system (CMS (Content Management System)) will look like, we can still work on creating and organizing content.  It doesn’t really matter where it’s parked right now, the content can be evaluated now and ready to copy/paste into wherever we end up.  Continue to think about our content management and workflow, and Wordpress vs Google Sites (and DCS CMS).

Context

• Rough website moving and cleanup plans were shared by John Lenz (our fearless website leader), 2013-09-18:
  http://list.9.0ne.org/archive/sagamore.online/2013-September/000093.html
• Dave made an electronic version of the Sagamore calendar and is wondering where to park it: http://www.9.0ne.org/w/Sagamore_calendar

Discussion Points

• HTTP redirects (Cool URI’s (links) don’t change! (says the the father of the Web)), let’s make sure we do right (no “page not found”s) --Dave
  • Have to wait and see what the county allows
  • For the PTA site, we can
• Google Sites, might they have a place (e.g., for PTA work)? --Dave
  • It’s an option, look into it
• Wordpress theme
  • Child theme some minor changes off the default wordpress theme to leverage all that the default theme brings (responsive, well tested, etc.) (review of TwentyThirteen, the current default Wordpress theme)?
    • AGREED
• I think we should try to make individual pages for every topic that needs to be visited (talent show, ar, transportation, etc) and link generously between them (Wikipedia style).  De-emphasis menu based content navigation in favor of linking to content directly and search. --Dave
  • Give it a try on a fresh Wordpress install at PTA’s Dreamhost account
• Editor/user account policy
  • Didn’t address
• Content Management, perhaps out of scope of this meeting
  • Content is currently scattered across:
    • Sagamore Hills PTA website Wordpress
    • Constant Contact
    • sagamamorephotos@gmail.com
    • Individual volunteers
  • We don’t need to figure it all out in this meeting, but it may inform website decisions we’re making now
  • John & Dave agree there could be value there
    • Talk to past and present email newsletter people (Heather Fullmer & Nancy Shober) about their existing workflow
    • Consider using Wordpress as the email newsletter generator and find a Wordpress plugin that allows emailing from there
    • Keep imagining how Google Apps might work to that end
• It may be that the school site can’t leave DCS servers
• Promote the electronic calendar

Mentioned in Meeting

• Dave’s calendar content: http://www.9.0ne.org/w/Sagamore_calendar
• Different Sagamore calendars found: http://www.9.0ne.org/w/Sagamore_information_inventory_2013