Wow, that’s a lousy title. Anyway.
The Lenawee County Conservation League has a new web site. Fun stuff. Sometimes it’s relaxing to back down from the MS development and do things entirely differently.
Things I learned/knew and repeated/did:
- An organizational Google account for managing services in a way that can be passed to others easily, with options for control and forwarding of content without having to give out passwords.
- Domain name registrations, hosting registrations etc all tied to the org accounts.
- cPanel setups/review
- Integration of Gmail, Google Drive, Calendar, Analytics, Maps, etc.
- Latest of WordPress, Customizing child themes, plugins, etc.
- Content on Pages vs Posts
- Menus
- Mobile tweaks
- SEO
- Contact forms
- Disabling comments
- Post expiration
- Link lists in child pages
- Galleries & Slide shows
- PDF Viewing
- Revision control
- Security
- Statistics
- Image management/optimization
- User management/workflow
- Automating backups to Google Drive
- Automating Google Drive photo sharing to WordPress media
- Custom Google Calendars to create sunset minus-x-minutes events
Big ideas/goals:
The site is pretty static – there are usually monthly newsletter/calendar updates, but lately there’ve been signup requests and photos to share in addition.
- I wanted an easy way to direct an email I receive with attachments to the site for publishing without having to visit it. Especially from my phone, or even automated via rules.
- I wanted a way for content creators to work directly on it without having to be nerds
- I wanted backups – there were past issues with loss of access/control, mistaken changes, etc.
- I wanted modern – the site was previously an old MS Frontpage design with manual html tweaks, FTP, etc. The host was static-html only, no dbs, etc – so the host had to be replaced.
- I still want better content – most emails I see to the site ask about membership which is not adequately described, pricing can be complex, etc. The calendar updates come out via PDF, and I’ve copied that info to a Google Calendar that is displayed online/sharable/copyable to personal appointments, etc – but we’re not quite at the point of fully managing it via Google yet. Still working with other members on that stuff.
- I wanted to be able to leave it alone. Updates, security, etc should all be automatic (as much as possible). WordPress itself auto-updates now, but it looks like plugins don’t. So I want a way to get notified/automate that if possible, especially from a phone.
So far, so good.