New Intermountain-STC Website

By Tom Johnson on Tuesday, August 4, 2009

In our attempt to bring the chapter back to life (and out of “the dead zone,” as someone put it today), we decided to revamp the website, building it on a new, more interactive platform. Yes, you guessed it, this site now runs on WordPress. But it’s not really a blog — just a CMS with interactive features. I would like to take credit for the design and all the coding, but if you know anything about WordPress, then you know it’s a theme I acquired from Brian Gardener, who is probably the most well-known WordPress theme designer out there. I just made it work with our content, with some help from Ben Minson (who did the banner) and Paul Pehrson.

Here are some of the benefits of this new platform:

Regular news featured on the front page

With the old site, it was hard for people to contribute content, because it all had to go through the webmaster, who had to modify the index.html file, insert the content, and FTP it to the site. With the new site, anyone can be entitled as an author. You can contribute content wherever you can access the internet. Because of the ease of authoring, you can expect more regular content, contributed from a wider number of chapter members. In other words, the site will be more lively, informative, and visually engaging.

Inclusion of other feeds

Many people are busily engaged in social media, whether on Twitter, blogs, or elsewhere on the web. This site tries to rope in some of the blog content, at least, through a Yahoo Pipe, which it displays in the sidebar. If you have a blog or other RSS feed of any kind, send it to me and I’ll add it to the sidebar pipe. Alternatively, you can add your blog and Twitter ID to the Member Blogs and Twitter page.

Interactivity in comments

You’re no longer forced to sit passively in your computer chair staring at the computer. You can now actively comment on articles, provide your own opinions, contribute feedback, or whatever. The comments will allow some additional community interaction to occur. Plus, it will make reading news on the site more engaging.

Updates by RSS, Email, or Twitter

To get site updates, you can subscribe to either the RSS feed, email updates, or to Twitter. When new posts are added to the site, all three forms of distribution automatically update. You no longer have to check back at the site at various times just to see if there’s new content (not that anyone was really checking). Because other chapters are following our chapter site on Twitter, this will increase our intercommunication among chapters as well.

More robust job stream

When you search for jobs, you’ll see that the Indeed Job stream page automatically pulls in the latest jobs from Indeed.com (which pulls in info from various job sites) and embeds them on the site. This job stream searches for all jobs that contain the words “technical writer” and “utah.” Employers can also post jobs directly to Indeed through a Post a Job link on the site. There’s a fee for posting, though. Companies can still post jobs by sending us information, but to be honest, if an employer is seriously looking for human resources, they’ll probably already have their job posted somewhere else that Indeed dynamically pulls in.

Member list page

Do you ever wonder who else is in our chapter, besides the board and other leaders? On the Members List page, you can view brief descriptions of the chapter members. By clicking the name, you can view their full profile page. Right now, since the site is new, there aren’t many people listed. But you can list your profile by following the instructions in the sidebar of the Member List page.

Submenu header navigation

The site offers a rich submenu navigation in the header, with three separate levels. This robus navigation will more easily accommodate a larger content offering. As we need to add more content to the site, we can easily find places for it.

Search fields

You can now search the site directly for content using the Search field in the upper-right corner of the screen.  Additionally,  if the search results turn up blank, you can browse an auto-generated sitemap.

More possibilities

We’ve only scratched the surface for our site. The WordPress platform offers a lot of community-oriented plugins. In short, pretty much anything is possible here. If you have a feature you want to add to the site, let me know. Also, if you have some news to add to the site, please let me know as well.