Sagamore online goals 2014

Sagamore Hills online presence is getting some much needed attention in 2014. A core group of volunteers (David Klein, Dave Barker, John Lenz, Nancy Shober, Monica Ellingson) and anyone else too, are discussing in the Sagamore online group (email • archives • subscribe & more) and making notes here (anyone can use the "edit" links).

Near term goals

Wordpress mechanics

Dave, 2014-05-07: Decide how we're going to use Wordpress's organizational conventions: menus, categories, tags. As I understand Wordpress, "themes" are often far more than just "skins"; in addition to changing the look of the site, they can shape how content is organized and provide additional site features. I think it's important that we keep our content easily portable to future changes, and that means using lowest common denominator Wordpress ideums and not leaning hard on features of a particular theme. Being new to Wordpress, I'm trying learn what that means. Checkout the Sagamore PTA Wordpress notes.

Dave, 2014-05-23: Here are Wordpress's default content type conventions:

Posts

Blog-like entries—our communications that forward onto the Wildcat or Facebook or whatever

Pages

Reference information that doesn't have a shelf life, like more traditional static pages), contains are the information Posts will often be pointing to (e.g. a page dedicated to explained what Accelerated Reader is)

Wordpress also has taxonomy facilities by way of categories and tags, but the only apply to posts, and I'm thinking they'd be good for pages too. Pages can be heirarchically related (child/parent).

Confirmed I don't care for presenting heirarchical navigation like Wordpress pages encourage by default.

Thinking about what minimal plugins we should build to automate navigation… It feels like Wordpress categories might be the right glue to tie together pages and posts topically. For example, posts categorized "garden" would be mentioned on the garden's page. Something similar already happens on Wordpress's page for a category term, but it's not a full fledged page (with rich content and in the page heirarchy). But maybe we match on the slugs of the categories and pages?

Next term goals

New content

Go, David!

All the reference material we wish was online.

Some bits:

• Treasures hiding in Constant Contact
• Things like old handbooks that might be hiding in the PTA Google Drive
• Sagamore reference
• Sagamore information inventory 2013
• Sagamore communication

Long term goals

Reengage social media

Sagamore's Books of Faces and Twitterings and whatnot…

Monica Ellingson: major work needed here. Other schools push notifications and parent volunteer beat using existing social media channels. Push relevant content where people already are. Maybe less emphasis on web site (passive) and more on social presence (active) for parent engagement.

2014-05-09: Discussion started elsewhere, conclusions to be copied here

Facebook

See also: Sagamore Facebook

District school site role

Talk to Ms. Brown about how the Sagamore Hills district site should relate to ours.

Dave, 2015-02-17: Have talked to Ms. Brown and she doesn't see a problem with the district school site (I think it has usability issues that can be improved (navigation, proper use of news articles vs site pages)), she seems quite protective of it and not interested in outside help. Considering talking to Principal Taylor about the weakness of the district Sagamore site and if we can gain access to improve.

Workspaces

Have workspaces on the site where project work process is shared with collaborators and the curious (future volunteers!)

New Newsletter mechanics

It might be best Newsletter (and other push channels) content is the produced on the website first and then automagically republished on other channels.

Dave, 2014-05-07: I mentioned one possible method last September.

Dave, 2014-06-11: To a traditional Wildcat Update, adding a listing of recent selected website posts (like after the traditional "from the presidents" intro) is possible via MailChimp tags

Dave, 2014-08-18: Or maybe we just make a Google Group announcement list that folks subscribe to and have Wordpress email content there. I need to look and see what plugins would do that…

• Subscribe2
• WP-EMail
• WP Email Template
• WP Mail SMTP
• WP SMTP
• Easy WP SMTP

Media management

• Can we do better than mailto:sagamorephotos@gmail.com ?
  • Dave, 2015-02-17: Created photos@sagamorehillspta.org and is still working on transitioning to it
• Should the PTA online storage play a part?
  • Dave 2015-02-17: With photos@sagamorehillspta.org comes its own Google Drive space where all the photos that had been collected under sagamorehillspta@sagamorehillspta.org ownership have been transferred to, but still working on phasing out sagamorephotos@gmail.com
• How about sharing via social media (designating a unique Sagamore hashtag)?
• Regularly updated highlights on the website?

Support parent-to-parent communication

Like with Sagamore PTA discussion groups

Dave, 2015-02-17: A few have been created (see http://sagamorehillspta.org/groups ) and used to a limited degree (they haven't been publicized yet). Don't count this as done until each grade and/or class has one?

Done

Near term goals

Domain name

Is sagamorehillspta.org the right domain? See Sagamore online#Domain for what we're currently working with. No? Which one then?

Dave, 2014-05-07: John's sagamorehillselementary.com might be good, if not a little long. It could work like Jen pointed out http://fernbankelementary.com/ does.

Dave, 2015-02-17: Marking this as "done" since I haven't heard anyone that else is interested in changing.

Website platform

Dave, 2015-02-17: Done!

Wordpress… yes!

• The pulse seems to be for Wordpress
• Any reason not to stick with the Sagamore Hills PTA Dreamhost account hosting it?
• The http://test-wordpress.sagamorehillspta.org/ is available for testing. Login credentials the same as the PTA site (check the password file in the Google Drive).

Styling

What will the website look like…? Who has the Wordpress theming chops?

JRL: Yes, I can do this.

Dave, 2015-02-17: Seems low priority (so calling "Done" for now); the work done seems good enough for now.

URL redirects

TL;DR: Old links still work

• Dave 2014-05-15: Made comprehensive list of URLs to redirect
• Dave 2014-05-23: Might not need to redirect all of them since imported content will take old post IDs if available

Make the new Wordpress installation use post IDs we haven't used before to avoid collisions (terms and users weren't utilized enough on the old site to bother with), then setup .htaccess redirects from the old to the new as desired.

1. On the new Wordpress database:

   ALTER wp_posts AUTO_INCREMENT = 2001 ;

2. Make entries in the Sagamore .htaccess

JRL: Yes, Wordpress has "pretty" URLs that can be used, and content can be assigned to those "pretty" urls if the .htaccess file is writable. If not writeable, we can manually add in some directives to the .htaccess file and we'll be good to go.

• Right now, all valid www.sagamorehillspta.org permanantly redirect to their (non-www.)sagamorehillspta.org coutnerparts via some Wordpress mechinism. I wonder if we should to the opposite—forward non-www to www—to accomodate other future hosting options?
  • Dave, 2014-02-17: Naw…

Old thought we're not doing: Because the old site exposed post IDs (http://sagamorehillspta.org/?p=58 (or "?page_id="s)) (didn't use address beautification), it may make sense to try to put those posts in the same place on the new site so the redirect happens for free (without Apache rewrites).

Relaunch existing PTA site

Let's start out by providing a refreshed version (new domain, new look) of the existing PTA site contnet only.

Dave, 2015-02-17: Done!

Next term goals

Incorporate test-google-sites content

Bring in content from http://test-google-sites.sagamorehillspta.org ; see Sagamore PTA Google Sites notes