On Monday Nancy told me they were going to get her cousin to fix our local Habitat affiliate's website. There are a variety of problems with the site but old data is the most prominent. It is basically useless. My guess is that about half the board sees no value in having a website. That got me thinking. Yesterday I created a mockup of the website using my favorite no-cost cms,
phpwebsite. Phpwebsite is one of the most popular low cost content management systems. It is a sourceforge project that is primarily maintained by Applachian State University. Since I think I will use it elsewhere I viewed this as a training exercise. I had previously installed it on my fedora box so it was ready for customization. I spent a couple of hours grafting the best ideas I saw from local Habitat affiliate sites onto the menu for the new site. Then I customized the "clean" theme to add a new logo and copyright. I was finished. Although the site is workable as I have designed it, I consider it a prototype which demonstrates the major content and function requirements I consider to be important for the new website. It should be interesting if her cousin sees what I have done. It would be nice if we could have several people add content to the site but I think that he will create a static site. Ultimately the lack of consensus on the priority of the site by the board will doom it to being stale again.
