Thursday Website Meeting

Hi all,

I am looking forward to Thursday’s Meeting regarding the Chamber’s web presence.  All input is welcomed.  I will be presenting the site features, offering training, and proposing further updates based upon the input that I have already received so far.  

The Trouble with Social Media

While Social Networking remains a powerful tool to reach large numbers of internet users, there are some signs that Social Media as we have known it for the last decade may have already reached its heyday, and could decline rapidly .  Studies have shown that substantial numbers of people are closing their accounts, and in a view to the future, young people are turning to new types of messaging solutions to communicate with friends.

Additionally, when you submit to these sites, you relinquish your ownership and control of the content.  Complicated algorithms and “community guidelines” dictate how your submissions are handled, and the big tech mega-companies not only go so far as to engage in the practice of banning users and content based on keywords and other criteria, but they also harvest your data and use it for their own benefit, not necessarily yours.

With online censorship on the rise, even if you are not concerned that you may be banned from your favorite platform, you will lose the viewership of those who are.

Your own Website

In a constantly evolving world, having your own website in an environment in which you have complete control over your own data continues to be of value, and is still one of the best ways to get your story out to the public.

Our Chamber website is an implementation of the Drupal platform, which is supported by a worldwide network of developers, and it is the leading open-source, database driven, enterprise level CMS.  The capabilities of Drupal are boundless, and the modularized design of the system is based around community-contributed solutions.  It is also highly secure.  Its multi-user design allows for very granular control of access and features to various users and role assignments, in terms of user experience as well as administrative function.

The theme of the site is Mobile-First, Responsive, HTML5 and features the use of jquery extensions to adapt to various screen sizes and device types.

With the use of the ckeditor plugin, content, community calendar events, etc, are very easily updated by anyone, no knowledge of HTML or CMS is required to create content, with formatting including the integration of links, images nnd videos  It is essentially as easy as making a social media post.

The site’s database is somewhat mature, and older content is also archived and searchable.

What’s New

Based on input I received so far, I have been continuing work on setting up a theme update, which presents a view similar to a website example presented to me by Janet at a previous meeting that I had with her.  (Work in progress, here is a front page screenshot, I will be providing a complete preview at the meeting).  This new theme could be ready to go live with just a little more work.

I will be seeking more input and direction on site design, but also a primary need at this time would be for fresh content.   My own suggestion would be that some of the effort currently being contributed solely toward creating social media posts could also be directed toward the website.  A number of outdated images and photos need replacement and new copy needs to be written for some of the page content, slogans, etc.  Social media posts can also then be linked to the new content on the website.

In Lak'ech,

--Dan

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