September launch

One big reason that I attended WordCamp in Atlanta this past March was to begin laying the groundwork for a major overhaul of scsba.org. A static HTML presence since former marketing coordinator Millie Hough hired me to redesign it in 2005, the site was long overdue for transition to CMS.

Thanks to current SCSBA Director of Communications Debbie Elmore, that transition was a quick and painless one. We spent a day meeting with departments, then a few weeks culling, improving and reorganizing content. Then I spent a few weeks implementing. Last Friday, we launched. Almost 100 pages. Done.

The new site is appropriately content-focused, as any good communications tool should be. Clear calls to action, intuitive navigation, easy on the eyes yet distraction-free. The previous site, typical of its era (if I may refer to 2005 as a different “era”), was more design-focused and though it might sound strange coming from a designer, I don’t miss those days.

Yet to come are more personalized staff pages, updated download documents and a more interactive calendar. And speaking of downloads, the Download Manager Pro plugin has proven to be an excellent way to compensate for the platform’s lack of a native ability to password-protect individual files.