Building a new website at ParraPals

Our blogger, John Lee has kindly allowed me to be a contributor to the blog he has been publishing for the club over the past few months.  I do hope I live up to his high standards.

I thought I'd fill you in about our new website, which looks quite different from the "old" one, which I designed in 2007.  It was looking a bit dated and no longer competitive in the annual ASCCA competition.

So at the left, you will see the new look.  It is based on the open source technology www.wordpress.org, which is the most popular blogging application (apart from Google's Blogger the other popular alternative).  In fact WordPress is now one of the most popular website building frameworks, given the power of its added value.  Expert designers are building a wide range of themes and "plug-ins" for WordPress.  These save "not so savvy" website builders a lot of work, learning sophisticated code to create website facilities that leave us saying "how did they do that?"

This blog - A volunteer at Parramatta Computer Pals - is based on a single page and many posts.  It is built with the Google tool Blogger, which we sometimes teach at ParraPals.  A Wordpress blog is generally set up much the same.

But Wordpress is more than a blogging format, it also has the capability to create a web-based Content Management System (or CMS).  When used as a powerful website, Wordpress generally has many pages as well as posts or articles.  

It also offers widgets which display common features such as a Search window, Calendar, Events management, Categories and Tags which display every post classified in a particular category or topic. You can see how I have arranged these widgets on each main page.  I have not used Widgets on sub-pages, because I preferred to have a one column layout for much of the content.  You can see some "widgets" on the right.

As well as widgets, Wordpress has many free or commercial "themes" to choose from, and it is reasonably easy to choose colours and styles (within limits unless one is very technically competent).  WordPress makes it relatively easy for a computer savvy but not so savvy website builder to create a decent website.  It certainly helps to know various web design languages like "HTML" or "CSS" but not so necessary to know PHP or other web languages in detail.

On our website, you can type in any word you like and the CMS will search all pages and posts to find relevant material and list them.  You can then click on any one of these pages and posts you choose. Sometimes a search word or phrase eg "president" or "course timetable" will bring up a number of pages, so you might have to be more specific eg "Term 4 timetable".

This particular illustration of the Home page brings up a photo of last year's Christmas party.  But don't expect that to happen all the time.  The website will display a variety of header photos randomly. 

The website uses the same URL (web address) as the former website - www.parramattacps.org.au but it automatically transfers to the /wp folder behind the scenes.

Some of the most valuable information is hidden behind the Password Protected link.  All financial members are eligible for registration with a user name and password to see this section.  So please email me at webmaster@parramattacps.org.au and ask to be registered.  Hopefully all new members will be shown how to do this as soon as they are introduced to website and email functions.

So give it a go. Explore, see what's missing and let me know.