You are currently browsing the tag archive for the 'beginner' tag.
A society blog is a great way to put the word out about upcoming meetings, fund-raisers and other events. It allows you to include information about the agenda and guest speakers, provide directions to the event’s location or entrance fees. But don’t stop there. Most local papers and radio stations have community service sections in their papers and on their web sites providing community groups a bit of free press. Make sure you develop contacts with your local media and know how far in advance you need to submit your event information to get it included in their publications.
There’s another very useful resource you should consider – especially if you would like to connect with out-of-town visitors. Take a look at Yahoo’s Upcoming site. Visitors to the site can designate a location and find upcoming concerts, museum exhibits, festivals, sports events and meetings. Anyone can add an event – all it takes is a free Yahoo! account. You can post the obvious information – date, time, place – plus you can include details about the event and even links to your group’s web site. Did I mention that it costs you nothing to do this? Nothing but a few minutes of your time.
Now, here’s where it gets good. Because this is a Yahoo property, you can bet any of the posted events will be easily found by the big search engines. And, Upcoming is a great site for folks with smart phones like the iPhone, Blackberry and others that include web browsing capability. They can quickly find events near their current location (iPhone includes GPS functionality) and connect to both Yahoo and Google maps to find their way to the event.
Take a look at Upcoming. Try adding your meetings to the site. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
In the beginning there was HTML – hyper-text markup language. If you haven’t heard of HTML, it’s the language of the Web. It’s how you create the formatting for your content. Although HTML is still alive and well, any number of tools have been created to make page development almost as easy as creating a document in your word processing software. Even though these are easy to use, there’s still a lot of effort involved – editing the page, uploading it to the web server, checking, fixing, uploading and so on. And that doesn’t even count the cost of the software application itself . . .
There’s no need to be intimidated or discouraged. Today, there’s a better – and cheaper – way. Actually there’s several. These are called content management systems (or CMS) and they are web-based systems that organize and manage your entire site as well as provide sophisticated editing tools to make it easy to concentrate on the most important part of your site – your content.
The real beauty of a content management system is that it separates the site design from the content. Many systems offer several design options so all you have to do is xhooaw a theme. This frees you to concentrate on content. You can write and edit your articles without having to worry about managing the design elements. The CMS handles all that. It will also manage the indexing, linking, menus and other elements that make your site a useful knowledge center for your society’s membership. As you become more experienced – or find a volunteer with some design skills – you can customize a generic theme into your own unique look.
This article takes a look at several basic systems, describing how they can be used by a society or association to manage their sites.
General Web Site
General sites are used to present and maintain your organization’s information. This is generally a combination of static information (items like the society’s by-laws which are seldom changed) and dynamic information (news items, event calendar, etc.). Content management systems for general sites provide for multiple authors handling specific content types. For example, membership committee members might post and edit membership content while the reunion committee handles all reunion news.
Content management systems for general sites support all levels of sites – from the very basic to the most complex. There are several good open source systems (open source generally do not cost anything to use). Some of the more popular systems like Joomla can be found as hosted services where the software is set up and maintained by your hosting provider. Usually this is included in your hosting fee and is well worth the price if you’re not technically inclined.
General web site applications generally are the most flexible but will require a significant planning effort to organize the content within the site. If the site is to have multiple authors, you will also need to plan for permissions within the various content categories and develop a review and approval process for your site.
General site applications include:
Portal Site
Portals are designed as interactive sites where site members generate most of the content. These sites include features like message boards, polls and photo albums where all members are encouraged to participate. RootsWeb is a good example of a portal.
Portals are good choices when you want – and expect – active participation from your membership. It helps when your membership is comfortable with computer technology and wants to participate. Your role will be more a site manager and cheerleader than a content manager and web development experience is necessary to install and manage a portal site.
Portal applications include:
Blog Site
A blog (short for web log) has been designed to present articles in consecutive order much like a journal or diary. The most recent entry is the one at the top of the screen when you visit a blog site. Site content is further organized by the use of categories and tags (keywords) which help visitors find specific content.
Blog sites are the easiest and cheapest to get up and running. Many blogging services offer free starter accounts which can be upgraded to paid accounts as your content and needs expand. Most blog content is organized in a standard format making it easy to distribute your content – and migrate it should you decide to move from one CMS to another. Don’t let this simplicity fool you – blog sites have great potential.
Blog applications – hosted:
Just in case it isn’t totally obvious yet, we here at MCOHS are great blog fans.
Thanks to Geneaphile for pointing me to these very interesting articles:
- Why a Genealogical Society Should Blog
- Does Your Library Have a Genealogy Department? Do They Have a Genealogy Blog?
Both are written by the queen of blogging – Lorelle VanFossen – well worth the read. And, if you’re looking for a good example of a Genealogical Society blog, stop by the California Genealogical Society and Library Blog.
This site is hosted as a free blog on WordPress.com. My choice of WordPress is a personal choice. I’ve worked with several of the online content management/blogging applications and found WordPress to be a good balance between functionality and ease of use. WordPress is a content management system that provides both static pages and a blog capability – along with a sophisticated plugin platform allowing additional functionality.
Static pages are used to provide content that doesn’t change often. This could include an overview of the association, information on how to become a member, by-laws, association leadership and other general information. This is called static information because it doesn’t change often. Sure, leadership changes and by-laws are updated, but not that often.
WordPress’s blog component offers an easy way to provide updates and/or one-time content. This includes news, announcements, upcoming meetings and events and updates to site content. The blog displays content with the most recently added item at the top of the screen. All blog postings are searchable and can be organized into categories so visitors can easily find specific articles. Blog content is also syndicated – meaning it can be distributed in multiple ways. Members don’t need to visit the site to see if new content has been posted. They can choose to subscribe to the blog content to have new articles delivered to them either via email or through their newsreader software. This is not a WordPress-specific feature – any blog platform can do this.
One other feature making a blog platform attractive to societies and associations is the commenting function. When you choose to open your blog up to commenters, you provide your visitors an opportunity to interact with you. Not only do you create a conversation with your visitors (members or otherwise), but it provides an opportunity to learn more about your collections. For example, you might post an article including a vintage photo where you can only identify a few of the people in it. Invite your visitors to add any information they may have to expand your knowledge about this photo. You may be pleasantly surprised with the results.
WordPress isn’t the only blog platform providing a capability to extend the platform even further, but they do have an impressive developer community creating all kinds of additional functionality to your site. As the site grows you’ll be able to see how those additional capabilities can be put to use. Watch for reviews and discussions of various other options in upcoming articles. If you have a question about a particular platform – or content management in general – please add it in the comments section and we’ll be happy to respond.
