The Dream of a 21st Century Chapter Web Site
by John and Sally Perkins
If we were starting over from scratch and building a chapter web site for the 21st century, we would concentrate our efforts on having an online presents able to be read by and contributed to by any chapter member who knew how to use email. Our goal would be maximize the number of chapter members who contribute to the chapter site relying on the fact that most members know how to email and most own a digital camera.
Since Google Blogger is free, supports the posting of both images and text using an online post editor, interfaces with Google Calendar and Google Picasa Web Albums, and allows posting using email, Google Blogger would be our choice as the backbone for this, in principle, easy to create, update, and maintain chapter web site.
Any member who is given email address of the Chapter's blog could email posts using a standard email program or any word processor such as Word that support emailing. The online post editor allows any post to be edited and reposted.
The goal of the Chapter web site would be 2 fold. The first would be to keep the membership informed of current chapter events. The second would be to get as many members as possible contributing posts, articles, and images.
The basic components of the initial web site would be as follows:
* Blog with an email address that supports time dependent announcements that can be emailed to directly by chapter officers.
* Blog with a second email address that supports email posts by all chapter members. These posts would be monitored prior to being made public.
* Blog with no email address that supports static pages that do not change over time.
* Calendar site that can be integrated into all three blogs.
* Online web albums shared by all three blogs.
