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

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.

Website platform

Wordpress?

• 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).

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.

Styling

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

JRL: Yes, I can do this.

URL redirects

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?

Via .htaccess on the server. Magic might be something like:

# Example
# Match on query string, match on root (/) (and "?" seems necessary?), append redirect url with "?" to avoid appending the matched query string, redirect permanently
# For Wordpress Posts:
#RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^p=9999$
# For Wordpress Pages:
#RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^page_id=9999$
#RewriteRule ^/?$ http://www.sagamorehillspta.org/nice-name? [redirect=301]

Because the old site exposed post IDs (http://sagamorehillspta.org/?p=58 (and other "?something="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).

• Assigning post IDs is possible
• This is different than assigning slugs (pretty URLs) for address beautification

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.

Relaunch existing PTA site

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

Next term goals

Incorporate test-google-sites content

Bring in content from http://test-google-sites.sagamorehillspta.org

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

District school site role

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

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.

Media management

Can we do better than mailto:sagamorephotos@gmail.com ? Should the PTA online storage play a part? 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