webmaster

Greetings, I am Stan the PSEC Webmaster. This is my report. I am hoping to make these posts a regular feature of the site to let you know how things are progressing and how you can help contribute. I’ll try to keep them short. Click the link below to read the rest.

Things are moving along here at the website. I’ve made a fair number of additions to the development site that I think bring it to the brink of full deployment. Here is a list:

  • I attended a Mentor Night subgroup meeting in March and have been working with Jason Salazar to update the Mentor Night section of the site. Check it out and make suggestions if you have them.
  • Along with Luis Leon, I have attempted to put the Meeting Agendas on line. For example, here is the April 6th Meeting Agenda. This should remove the need to mail attachments and revisions to attachments. It also permits registered site users to add comments directly below the agenda which can be used to make modifications to the agenda. (Hopefully, it’ll also encourage the Reps to register for the site :))
  • I created a Volunteer Opportunities page and category. This is a sort of one-stop-shop for people who are looking to volunteer for anything. When you create a Post that asks for volunteers, make sure to tick off the Volunteer Opportunities category and it will automatically appear in this page.

Technical Changes

Most of these are things that you probably won’t notice but you might be interested.

  • I updated our domain registration (pseconline.org) for another year.
  • The software that runs the site has been brought up to the latest version.
  • I’ve also updated the few plugins that are installed on the site
  • Made a print stylesheet for the site. That means if you try to print a page, the printout will omit the navigator pane on the left, the banner at the top and will just show the stuff that appears in the main content pane. That should save some paper if you are printing. Let me know if you have any printing issues or have suggestions on how it could be better.
  • Created a HootSuite account. Thanks to Theresa Krack of SWE for putting me on to this. HootSuite is a site that allows you to monitor and schedule updates to other social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. I have been using it to post site updates on our twitter account. Consider following @pseconline on twitter if you want to get updates that way. I haven’t been able to get the Facebook group updates working yet though.

Up Next

A couple of things I’m working on:

  • I’m attempting to contribute a bit more content to this site. This report is one example. I’ll try to post on a more regular schedule. The goal is to get others involved. You should contribute too, it’s easy! Get yourself registered and talk to me about your ideas.
  • I’m evaluating a site plugin called Events Manager for calendaring. It looks like quite a bit more than we need but if I can figure it out, I’ll bring my suggestions forward. In the meantime, the regular old events calendar is still available and won’t go anywhere for the foreseeable future.
  • Looking to move towards decommissioning the old site. I hope to discuss that more at the May meeting. Please place comments below if you have them.
  • We might want to look into creating a separate Facebook account for PSEC. This is as opposed to the current setup where we have a PSEC Group. I have had difficulty posting to that Group from HootSuite. This would go away if there was a PSEC account. The question is do we really need a PSEC account? What would we do with it besides auto-updates from the PSEC website? Something to think about.

Thanks for reading. I expect to be at the May PSEC meeting so I hope to discuss these topics and more then.