Websites committee

The Websites Committee is responsible both for making sure that website content is current and relevant, and also for selecting, installing, and maintaining the software platforms that the websites are built on.

Overview

Ideally the Website Committee has co-chairs, with one of the chairs focusing on content and the other on the website software platforms.

There are four ASURA websites:

  • ASURA is the primary site used by members for "everything". It is housed on Pantheon and uses Webspark2.
  • This site, ASURA Help for Volunteers, is dedicated to providing information about what the duties are for each of the many volunteer roles that exist, and about how those duties can be carried out. It is housed on Pantehon and uses Webspark2.
  • The ASURA Photo Collection houses photos of volunteers and of ASURA events in galleries and albums. It is linked to from the ASURA site. It is housed on the Zenfolio photo hosting site, which is a commercial site. ASURA pays an annual fee to Zenfolio for its Premium plan, which provides unlimited storage, the ability to use an ASURA domain name, and the ability to use ASURA's logo on the site.
  • The membership and events site is used directly by members of committees that maintain membership records and offer events. It is used indirectly, through an interface on the ASURA site, by members who are registering for events, updating their membership profiles, or accessing the membership directory. The site is housed on Personify's WildApricot. ASURA pays an annual or bi-annual fee for use of the platform, at the Professional level. This allows us to have up to 2,000 active contacts in our membership database and up to 2 GB of file storage. WildApricot is also used to host forms, and membership-related files. 

Website content duties

In order to make sure that the ASURA websites have content that is current, relevant, useful, and in compliance with the ASU Brand Guide, committee members update or request update of pages.

Examples of content that needs regular attention:

  • The ASURA home page. Typically this advertises upcoming events or other news.
  • Information about Board members, officers, committee chairs, and office volunteers whenever there are new people in these roles, including photos and brief biographies from new volunteers.
  • New events, past events stories, Board minutes, Annual Reports, Video History Project interviews, obituaries, Primes Times issues, the latest Trifold, E-news issues, scholarship recipients, and photos for the Photo Collection. Many of these are maintained by volunteers on the committees responsible. 
  • Roles served during the past year need to be updated on individual volunteer bios each April, and the slate of officers who served in the past year needs to be added to the Past Leadership page.
  • The ballot for the Board elections needs to be updated and linked to each year, in February.
  • The annual scholarship recipient with photo and area of study needs to be added to the "Scholarship Winners since 1996" page.
  • Duties and "how-to" information on this site, the Help for Volunteers site. Ideally, the committee asks volunteers to review the content for the roles they have served in once a year, perhaps in April when new Board members and officers are installed.

The ASURA and ASURA Help for Volunteers sites are built on a platform provided through ASU, called Webspark 2.

This site's (the Help for Volunteers site's) menu, titled "Website Tasks", has two major submenus that provide "how to" instructions for people who are adding, editing, or deleting content on the sites. The submenus are titled "Webspark Basics" and "Custom Content". 

 Instructions for updating the homepage are located on the Update homepage page.

 

Photo Collection content maintenance consists of adding albums when there are new events and uploading photos to the new albums or to existing albums.

Instructions are available at "Update Photo Collection".

Instructions for how to add, modify, and delete events on the membership and events site are covered on the Create Event on Wild Apricot page. The Websites Committee would not normally be responsible for posting the events, but may do so as a service to the Events Committee.

The membership database that is on this site is updated by various volunteers, such as the Membership Operations Manager, the Office Volunteers, and the Database Committee. The Websites Committee is not responsible for the content of the membership database or of the associated processes, such as distribution list maintenance.

 

 

The following people are currently maintaining content on the ASURA websites:

  • Carolyn Minner - Obituaries

  • Pat Schneider - Seminar event reports 

     

  • Current Association secretary - Board minutes
  • Barry and Connie McNeill - everything else

Website platform duties

Participate in ASU forums and meetings for those who develop and maintain ASU websites. These include:

  • A monthly ASU.edu Web Community meeting (via Zoom) that you can sign up for at the indicated website.
  • A monthly Webspark 2 Support Hours meeting (via Zoom) provided by the UTO at ASU. You do not need to sign up for this -- just log in to the Zoom meeting at 2:00 p.m. on the 2nd Wednesday of each month. Zoom meeting link/ID: https://asu.zoom.us/my/itzelm (you will have to be logged in to myASU to get to this meeting).
  • The ASU Slack web community forum (listed under "Slack channels" on that page). This is where ASU web developers ask questions, report problems, and in general communicate with each other about ASU website matters. If you are retired, you will have to ask someone to sponsor a Courtesy Affiliate account for you so that you can use Slack. This may be either the ASU Manager for Web Experience or our liaison in Human Resources. For the links associated with these people to work, you must log in to this site and have permissions to see the list of Helpful people. 

Maintain a knowledge of ASU's Web standards and guidelines for asu.edu sites.

Report problems and make requests regarding the websites using the ET Web Service Center.

Be aware of support options from ASU's Enterprise Technology.. Discuss this with the Board if the list of technical responsibilities listed here is just "too much".

Note: If ASURA does not have a volunteer who can do this, ASU's Enterprise Technology (ET) can be hired, through an annual subscription. Consultation with ET would be necessary to determine which annual subscription offering would be best for ASURA.

See "Website definitions" for an explanation of the basic Webspark platform and terms related to it.

Routine duties for the two Webspark-based sites include:

  • Apply new Webspark releases when they are made available.
  • Add or delete any custom Drupal modules needed to provide desired site functionality.
  • Add or modify Drupal content types and views as needed to provide desired site functionality. Directions for doing this are to be had in many places on the Web, as Drupal is a very popular open-source web content management system. One useful site is available from Tutorialspoint.
  • Make sure site usage data is being maintained, and review and report on the collected data as appropriate.
  • Provide "how to" documentation on this site for their own tasks and for those who are maintaining content on the sites, including how to stay in compliance with ASU website brand and accessibility standards.

 

The ASURA Wild Apricot site uses customization to make pages conform as much as possible to the ASU brand. This matters primarily for the pages that integrate with the ASURA site (see below).

For "how to" help in maintaining the look on the Wild Apricot site, use the Help center (bottom of the left menu).

Searches that are especially relevant for ASURA's site on Wild Apricot are:

  • All about themes
  • Customizing colors and styles
  • Page templates
  • Making menu items not clickable
  • CSS customization (used on the site to implement ASU brand standards)

 

In order for members to find everything they want to find on the ASURA website, some content from the Wild Apricot site is displayed on ASURA website pages. In particular, these include:

  • The member's membership profile, with the ability to update it
  • Events lists (which then enable registration)
  • The membership directory

This integration is achieved by embedding a Wild Apricot widget into another website.  You can see how to do this, or to modify what has been done, by searching the Wild Apricot Help Center on "embedding a widget into another website".

The ASURA Photo Collection site is housed on Zenfolio. It uses customization to make the site conform as much as possible to the ASU brand standards -- which is only somewhat possible. This site is based on old software, and it is fairly limited. The photo collection needs to be moved to a new site, preferable a Webspark site!

To modify the customization, you must be logged in to the site. There is a login button in the lower left of the footer. Login credentials are listed on the Technology Accounts page of this site (must be logged in and have permission to see that page).

Once logged in, you can use the "Edit" pulldown at the middle top to choose "all". Then choose "Dashboard" from the top menu, and click on "Customize Website" in the Website block.

  • Use the "Site Header" and "Site Footer" links at the bottom left to modify those elements.
  • Use the "Edit Site Menu" to modify the menu. 
  • Use the "Themes" link at the top and the choose the "Edit" button on the ASURA theme to adjust the colors, fonts, and headings used on the site, and the overall appearance of the menu bar. Note: this is very slow to load.

See "Update Photo Collection" for additional information.

 

 

 

Updated 1 Feb 2024 by Connie McNeill

Maps and Locations Jobs Directory Contact ASU My ASU
Repeatedly ranked #1 on 20+ lists in the last 3 years
Copyright and Trademark Accessibility Privacy Terms of Use Emergency