I posted this after the newsletter sent out today because it dawned on me that some brothers (and guests) may want to comment on the new look of the site or the new features. As you can see the biggest cosmetic change is the site itself, I re-skinned the website with a new template from yoothemes (if you wish to check out the potential its called "yoo pure"). But I couldn't stop there because so many of our components driving the site were outdated or more importantly broken!
- I started with the component that handles our dues and contributions, even though no one has used it to pay dues yet it is secure and fast since it uses PayPal to make the transaction.
- I completely changed our members registration and backend community to a new fresh component called JomSocial which was built on a similar framework as Facebook. It allows us to interact better through the site and a central place to see what's going on.
- I moved the "What's New" page to the "members" drop down menu so you can always see all of the changes happing on the site in real time.
- Speaking of the menu, I mildly restructured that so its a bit easier to navigate. All the links needs for a member is located under the member's drop down link now!
- I also changed the blogging platform so its easier for any brother to contribute new content very fast to the website. It's important to keep the front-page content fresh and current, this will be the job of the actives to dedicate 15mins at least once per month to update the frontpage with a new article (i.e. an event for the fraternity, something going on at school, and big news!)
- Which leads me into the next update which is MailChimp! The website now alerts me to push out an email once per month containing the new content on the site. It's a great tool to keep brothers involved an for those not involved maybe they'll at least be interested.
- Lastly, there were many things needing upgrades and cleaning which I did but it's not worth describing in detail here because it's nothing you'll end up noticing on the frontend.
P.S. this took me about 15 mins to write, there's really no reason we can't have more content on this site via the actives experiences at Pratt or the alumni. Remember this blogging tool is newer than before but more intuitive, if you want an image associated with the blog post click on the image tab (don't just put it in the post -- although you can do that if it's within the article) and if you want a gallery of images in the post click on gallery, and so on.
Have fun, and I hope everyone enjoys it. Please leave comments below (if your a member of the site already, you may have to login first).
109 days ago
