brassblogs

So, I currently (and temporarily) handle a website for a not-for-profit club in my area. I took over almost 2 years ago when I volunteered to help the current webmaster when she was out on a vacation. At that time, the site was pretty much done through this process:

• The person writing the article for the newsletter would submit a word document or HTML email to the newsletter editor, who would compile all of the information into one long Microsoft Word document.
• The Newsletter editor would then send that .doc file to the webmaster, who would pick through the entire newsletter to link things that needed to be linked, change copy (as needed) to fit the web and do other assorted things to the file to make it internet-ready.
• Such items would be to save all of the images in respective monthly folders
• The webmaster would also create the HTML file from within Word and upload everything to the server – resulting in seriously bloated code, as well as cross-browser inconsistencies.
• Doing all of this work also took a lot more time than was necessary, and archiving was completely manual.

So I decided to 1) give the site a new look, and 2) put it into WordPress so it was easy to manage everything. The new look wasn’t a problem…. but the newsletter was.

I’ve tried several “newsletter” plugins, some seemed promising, others were absolutely not – and none did exactly what I needed. So I began cobbling ideas and functions (and plugins) together to see if I could make something work. What I came up with worked rather well, but I’ve been using the system for almost 2 years now (and my term on the board as the newsletter editor is coming to an end – I have to hand this off to others who aren’t as “savvy” as I am) and in that time, I’ve seen the downside to what I’ve done, and how what was in my head doesn’t translate well to real life.

So now I need to revamp the back-end of this site to pull off my needs. There’s only a few places, really, that need redone – but they are biggies. I’m working to figure out the best way to do it. Here’s a few of the issues I have, and thoughts on how I can fix them. Keep in mind, these are thoughts only – not definites. I’m sort of thinking out loud here. In the end, I can see me writing some type of plugin, and it’s possible I would release it to the public, if it proves to be what others might be looking for.

The Current State of Things, from the Club Perspective
Basically, the club wanted a simple, informational site. Something that allowed people to easily get information on what the club is, how to join – that kind of thing. They also wanted some “fun stuff” – photos and events, news releases, etc – to be filler. But the meat of the site is a) getting people to join and b) the monthly newsletter.

They also have someone who handles the membership aspect of the club – she has an excel file that contains all the information for each member that she updates monthly. Club members get a “directory” once per year that lists everyone who belongs to it, and chairpeople use the list often to print out labels for mailings (like invitations to club events, etc.) However, using an excel file (especially when they like to export it as a Word document) makes it really hard to format this stuff, and too much time and effort, IMO, is put into something that could be made relatively simple.

What I have done
I converted the site to a CMS (WordPress) System. However, I began running into issues. The first one was the fact that the newsletter was due to be released on the 20th of the previous month. For example: the December newsletter would come out on November 20th. My only solution (thus far) as been to use the WordPress tagging system, and tag the articles by the month it was to be released, not the month it was published, so that the archives would correctly reflect the date of the article. The issue with this: the WordPress tagging system has no method of ordering by date – so right now the listing for the newsletters are in alphabetical order – not in order by month and year.

The tagging system also worked well, because there are several articles that chairpersons put out that are recurring – they say the same thing (or almost the same thing) every month – so really they are monthly reminders that a particular sub group or event is always out there., and if you’re interested in joining, it would tell you who to contact. So rather than having to repost the same information as a new post month after month, I can simply tag the article for the month and year of the newsletter it’s supposed to be in, saving me from having to rewrite it over and over again. The issue with this: is I have to manually tag each post over and over again. Some of the posts are getting REALLY long in the “tag” department. It would be so much nicer if there were some method to automate it. Like write a post once, and then schedule it to post on the 20th of every month, and then no one has to think about it again until the next year.

Another thing was the articles themselves. I have a rather convoluted system in place for setting who the authors are, and what order the articles display in. Now WordPress has a system in place so you can easily set another registered user as the author of a particular article. My original idea was that it would be supremely easy if I set all board members and activities chair members with their own login to the site, and they could write their own articles. That way, people had control of their content, all the editor had to do was go in and edit the articles and make sure the correct information was there, and publish everything. Life would be easier for everyone. Another plus was that if someone need to email the board, or their particular subgroup, all they had to do was login, check a box, write the email and send it. However, much to my chagrin, I’ve since discovered that no one is interested in this. (as a side note, it’s a little frustrating – since the point of doing all of this was to make their lives easier. They were all excited about this setup, but when I finally finished it and wanted to get a session together to show people how to do it – not a single person was interested.) They like the idea, but no one wanted to learn how to do it (even as simple as I made it) – I guess it falls under “old dog, new tricks” or something. So now I have a bunch of authors, but only one person actually doing anything – me.

The articles themselves have the same title every time. However, the interesting thing is, every 2 years, the board positions change. So I had to figure out a method to have the articles attributed to a position, not a particular person. I also needed the old information to stay the same – so if I updated a person’s position, the old articles (from when a different person held that position) would still have the correct info for that year. It also had to pull in the correct email address and phone number for that person.

The articles also had to appear in a certain order: the board positions in a particular order (that really couldn’t be set by a simple “ASC” or “ID” call), and then the sub-groups were listed in alphabetical order.

The issue with all of this: when I write a new post, I have to manually look up who currently holds the position, and their contact information, and add it every time.

If I could have a wishlist on how to fix the back end of this site, it would be as follows:

• Somehow make WordPress see the posts, and if it’s published between the 1st and 15th of the month, it archives it in the following month. (i.e. if an article is published November 13th, 2009, it would immediately date-base-archive itself into December 2009.) Then I would no longer have to tag everything every month, nor would I have to try to come up with some system to force the tags to display properly.
• Have some sort of system in place where the recurring articles would have a “default” post that shows every month, but for those rare occasions when they need to alter a word or two, they wouldn’t need to rewrite the entire thing for such a small change, and these recurring posts would re-publish themselves on the same day every month. Sort of like a simplified version of the “post revisions” you see in the back end. That would be cool.
• Somehow have the system look at the post title or category, and pull from another file or database entry as to who currently holds that position and their contact information and shove it into a custom field. That way, past entries have the correct information for them, while current has the correct info, and all you’d need to do is change the info in the “placeholder” file (or plugin).

Currently, I’ve also got the Tribulant.com’s Mailing List Manager plugin going. I really like it, but I would like it a lot better if I could streamline the management. Right now, I have to search for users when I need to do something – and it would be a lot “awesomer” if it behaved a little differently. There’s a lot to that, though, so it’s hard to describe what I mean.

I’d also like a nicer system for printing the newsletters. Right now, once everything is on the website, I have a print stylesheet set up to display everything properly to print (and mail out hard copies to members), but you have to know some CSS to make it lay out properly every month. An easier system would be terrific. Perhaps something as far as asking on individual posts what margin you’d like to set it at, and where the line breaks should be – that way messin’ with CSS wouldn’t be necessary.

And finally, I’d love it if the chairs and board members would be willing to learn to use the system so they can actually enjoy the benefits of what’s going on here. However, that’s not a coding issue – it’s a people one.

So that’s where I’m at with this. My term as “editor” ends in July 2009, and I have to hand the reins over to whoever gets the position after me. I also have to give the “webmaster” status back to the actual webmaster (who probably hates me now because she hasn’t done anything for almost 2 years – she probably thinks I stole it away from her!) I’d love to be able to hand it back over with everything in place, dead-simple and easy to use, and easy to maintain.

So please feel free to discuss – because I’d love some other great minds on this one! Obviously me banging my head isn’t coming up with a ton of terrific ideas all on it’s own! I’d love some input from others. Any ideas are welcome.