STC RMC Website – A Whole New Look

by Deb Lockwood and Bill Thomas

During the 2006-2007 chapter year, the STC RMC leadership decided that it was time for the chapter to update its website. Our current website has been around for several years and from comments we’ve received from both members and nonmembers, we knew that the chapter’s website could benefit from improving the navigation and incorporating some Web 2.0 features.

Our first task was to form a committee of STC RMC members that would direct and help us accomplish this effort. This committee is made up of the following members: Ron Arner, Craig Bannister, John Endicott, Deb Lockwood, Martha Sippel, Frank Tagader, and Bill Thomas.

In March 2007, Kathy Recchiuti completed the task of creating a very detailed inventory of the current website. With a completed website inventory, the committee worked together to create more efficient navigation and organize the existing website information better. Martha Sippel finalized the information architecture the team drafted, including a wireframe design for the new site.

Immediately after finalizing the wireframe, we requested some outside assistance to come up with a new graphic design. With some help from Joe Victor, a website designer, the committee decided on a spiffy new look for the main and subsequent pages.

One of the things that we decided we needed to do was to move our website to a different web hosting service. Doing so not only allows us to take advantage of various technical capabilities, but saved the chapter a significant amount of money in annual hosting fees. After researching several possible vendors, we selected Dotster because they offered us the most functionality and proven reliability for a reasonable price.

Our most recent progress was made when Craig Banister volunteered to be the new webmaster and we actually moved the site to the new hosting service in February 2008. There were few glitches with the move, but overall, things have gone quite well. The email lists (discussion list, jobs list, and council) have been more of a challenge.

Now that the site is actually on the new host, future plans for the site include the following:

• Build out the site and launch it using the new design
• Add new functionality to the website (e.g., an updated calendar on the home page)
• Determine a new direction for the chapter’s newsletter using recommendations from our next year’s newsletter editor, Benjamin Cape

At this point, this multi-phased project is progressing and will continue throughout 2008 and probably into 2009 as our newsletter morphs into more of a blog format and new, yet-to-be-decided functionality takes form. We will be looking for people to own certain pages of our new website. We are also looking for members to test functionality as it becomes available. If you are interested in contributing to your chapter by helping with this interesting project, please contact us at info@stcrmc.org.