News

The new CHIFOO Web site was long in the making. (Mostly because CHIFOO is a volunteer organization and we all, you know, have jobs.)

Design

In 2006 the Executive Council began with a brainstorming session in which all of the possible purposes and goals of the website were listed.  Subsequently, three Personas were created: Council Member, Prospective Member, Returning Member. For each Persona, a key scenario was developed identifying and highlighting the kinds of activities, information and goals that Persona cared about.  As a council, we spend more time on membership tracking than any other activity - a gating factor if we want to scale the organization and not burn out council volunteers.  With the scenarios understood, the information architecture was created and a search was started to find inexpensive easy-to-use content management and membership management software as our back end.

With the gracious help of Portland based interactive agency, Whitehorse and specifically Catherine Veraghen,  the chapter settled on a new brand and visual identity supporting the scenarios and intended uses. At the start of 2008, with a new Executive Council, the chapter committed to taking the new design live.

Technical Details

As mentioned above, managing the CHIFOO membership list has been a time consuming, manual task involving the passing of Excel spreadsheets from one council member to another, reviewing and modifying member information and status, confirming PayPal payments, responded to newly signed up members, entering the paid status into the spreadsheet and communicating the changes all around the board. Membership renewal was a particularly sticky problem, as tracking precise sign-up dates was laborious hence our long-standing convention of expiring terms at the end of the calendar year. CHIFOO Executive Director, Leo Frishberg, was determined we put our members’ technical skills (we are in the ACM, after all—right?) to work in solving this membership management issue.

Online research revealed the options for Nonprofit Membership Management systems are few and expensive. Remarkably an inexpensive solution appeared: “aMember”. A piece of Web-based software that allows you to manage memberships, subscriptions, products, and payments, aMember could solve our Member renewal (and communication) woes. More interestingly, aMember can integrate with a number of Content Management Systems to regulate site access.

One such CMS that I had been exploring independently was ExpressionEngine, created by Oregon’s own EllisLab. ExpressionEngine has a robust user community and excellent corporate support, and I saw that a number of EE users had successfully integrated aMember into their sites. We aimed to do the same.

ExpressionEngine is remarkably easy to use (although, like any CMS, it has a learning curve). Step one was to install it on our server. Step two was to cut and paste the existing HTML/CSS designs for the site into EE’s Template system. Step three was to create Weblogs that would hold all of the site’s content: Event information, Job postings, News and Reviews—even the collection of photographs that appear on the Home page. Step four was to tie the Weblog content and the framework of the Templates together using ExpressionEngine’s own custom tags, which allow you to insert dynamic content drawn from the Weblogs into the static Templates. Step Five: Lots of data entry! CHIFOO board members imported existing content from the old CHIFOO Web site (events, bylaws, membership benefits, etc.) and created new content where necessary.

Finally (and that’s leaving out a lot of work, frustration, heartbreak, and triumph along the way), we integrated aMember with ExpressionEngine, importing our existing Member data and using aMember as a purchasing, renewal, and sign-in system for the EE-run site. From now on, CHIFOO members and potential members will be able to sign up for their annual membership online using PayPal. Renewal e-mails will be sent automatically to those whose memberships are about to expire, and expiration dates will occur 365 days after sign-up date—whenever that happens to be—rather than at the end of the calendar year.

Now that things are up and running, soon members can add content, including events, news items, and jobs at will using the CMS. Soon to be implemented is the ability for you to add information about yourselves for networking purposes, along with increased Member contributions of job postings, reviews, and comments on past articles or events.

Welcome to your new site!