The new district web sites were presented for the very first time this past weekend at the Council of Governors meeting in Aberdeen, NC. Pictured here is Lion John Lynde demonstrating some of the features of the new sites to the eight current district governors as well as the five district governor elects who will benefit the most from this effort. Lion Geoge Culp, chair of the IT Committee has been coordinating this effort which has been ongoing for many months. With the new districts starting this coming July the committee set out to ensure that every district had a working web site so that there would be no “down time” as we get started. The committee has made every effort to keep costs as low as possible while providing fully functional and professional web sites which will be enhanced and maintained by the web masters in each district going forward. There is still much to be done but the transition of responsibility to the district web masters is beginning now to provide ample time to be ready in July.
The committee has done a lot of work to make the online presence of each district as consistent as possible while still allowing ample flexibility for each district to be as unique as they want to be. This started with consistency in the domain names which was not very consistent in the past. At the same time, we balanced the need for the districts to have as much flexibility as they might need. Although the web pages we have created are a great starting point, the districts will have the ability to change as much or as little as they see fit. The sites that have been provided are based on WordPress which is an open source, easy to use, content management system with many plugins which can be used to extend it’s functionality. We also setup a collection of plugins to handle things like document downloads, a calendar for events, Google Maps, contact forms and much more. There is even the ability to upload the current district governor’s pin and add it to the header of the web page each year. This work was very well received by those in attendance.
The committee expects to spend the next several weeks transferring knowledge and responsibility for content to the district web masters. After that, the committee will continue to provide support, training and enhancements to the web pages going forward. Stay tuned for more updates over the coming months.