Update May 22, 2020

We solicited bids from website consultants to 27 firms, received five proposals and chose Michael Soden of Harcalf Agency, LLC. Soden wrote the popular sarasotasistercities.org website. The Board approved hiring them and work has begun. The Website Committee met online with Soden on May 22, 2020 and worked out many of the details of the site.


Links

Our Draft Site  https://sarasotamoaa.wordpress.com/

The Draft site will become  https://www.sarasotamoaa.com/

Information on new website  https://newwebsitemoas.blogspot.com/

Photos for the new website  https://websitephotosmoas.blogspot.com/

RFP   https://websitemoaa.blogspot.com/

Bid Anaylsis - private info, Board Members can to read.
https://bidsmoas.blogspot.com/
 
Sister Cities Website sarasotasistercities.org

Our Social Media will link to the new site

facebook.com/sarasotamoaa

twitter.com/sarasotamoaa

linkedin.com/in/sarasotamoaa

pinterest.com/sarasotamoaa

 

Our Blogs will link to the new site

thesarasotabreeze.blogspot.com

sarasotamoaa.us

photosmoaa.blogspot.com

bigphotosmoas.blogspot.com

videosmoas.blogspot.com

awardsmoas.blogspot.com

historymoas.blogspot.com

militarystories.us

Notes - our website committee decided to create a slimmed down website, no credit card payments, reservations, or database. Our database will return to spreadsheets offline. We can add a database and credit card collection if we decide to do this in the future.

We have experimented with the software, Wordpress, and used it to create the draft website. The basic software is free. I have purchased the professional version, a donation to MOAS.

We can easily update it with our photos and texts. Soden will make the site look and function much better and work out any bugs or problems and to serve as a consultant if we find something we cannot figure out or if we screw the site up somehow.

We will back up the site frequently to prevent loss. The software is not PFC or old Colonel proof - there are many times I have written something and lost it or ended up with an older version replacing the correct one. Operator error. I will work to get better at it. We also need one or more other people to learn to update the site in case the VC get me. Note - I am no expert in websites. A bit like the blind leading the blind. Like I was when I was a Second Lieutenant.

As you know, we have a wealth of information and photos about MOAA beginning in 2013. These Blogs, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest are linked into our current draft site and will be linked into the new website.

Example - The links to the Sarasota Breeze on the current website are currently on a PDF. Someone has to update them, You have to find where the PDF is located, and you have to click on the link. On the new site the Breeze will be a top button that goes directly to the Breeze.

We will show the Board with a small photo and email address so that people can email the Board directly. We will not use personal phone numbers except for mine if someone has a question and can't email. I would forward the inquiry to the right Board member.

Soden will set up a contact form for people to fill out so we have a record of their query.

We will use MOAS photos throughout the site. We can easily update and change them over time.

We are providing all of our photos to Soden and he will set up a gallery within the website to display the photos.



Please take a look at the draft site sarasotamoaa.wordpress.com and send you or suggestions.

Also please look at the Sarasota Sister Cities site at sarasotasistercities.org and let us know if you want something different.

____________


George Tracy

Fri, May 1,

Our web site is hosted on Club Essential servers, which primarily constitutes our monthly web site cost. This link, https://www.volusion.com/blog/website-maintenance-costs/, is a handy reference as to cost expectations for Blogs and/or websites.

I have continued to maintain the domain registration account (see below) with our original domain name registrar, Genesis Domains, who maintains our license to use the domain name, sarasotamoaa.com. Genesis Domains also used to host our website before Club Essential took over that service.

Consultant Info:

Michael Soden
Harcalf Agency, LLC
10624 S Eastern Ave.  A323
Henderson, NV 89052
Phone: 804-594-7065 ex101
Mobile: 804-641-5063
Skype: msoden52
Email: msoden@harcalfagency.com

Affiliations

Zone 26 ARPIC (Assistant Rotary Public Image Coordinator),  2018-2021

District Communications Officer and District Grants Chair, Rotary District 5300, Henderson, Nevada

Past President 2013-2014, Rotary Club of Green Valley (100% Paul Harris Fellow Club) Henderson Nevada

District Communications Officer/Webmaster, Rotary District 7600, Williamsburg, Virginia

Past President 2008-2009, Rotary Club of Brandermill, Midlothian, Virginia

 
Background Info:
 
Current domain name registrar is Genesis Domains

Current Website Hosting Club Essential Clubessential | Smarter Club Technology | Websites | Office | CRM

Will be transferred to Harcalf.

Website Meeting Notes May 4, 2020

Good meeting today May 4, 2020. The following are my notes (updated May 15, 2020). Items that I request you review and give me your input are bold in italics.

We have created a WordPress blog using the same software that we will be using for our new website. It is widely used software for simple websites and fairly easy to use. I have invited all of you to join the site and you can try out the software and see how it works for you.

I did some work on the draft site. It is working now but not pretty.

https://sarasotamoaa.wordpress.com/

The RFP is at https://websitemoaa.blogspot.com/ I sent it to 27 companies.

We will post the bids we receive as we receive them at https://bidsmoas.blogspot.com/ Proposals are due May 10, 2020. (This blog is private, if you want to review it ask and I will invite you to read it) I will post all the proposals and give you a short summary of the proposals. We will meet shortly after May 10 to pick the top consultant or consultants.

Take a look at the four sites on this blog – our site, National MOAA, the Florida Council of Councils, and Sarasota Sister Cities. Let me know what top menu items you prefer.

I have posted a number of photos on this site. The top 7 or 8 are the photos I think we could use for our site. Let me know if you agree or if you have better photos please send them.

 https://websitephotosmoas.blogspot.com/

After our discussions today perhaps we do not need a Members only log in site. Relatively few people use these log in sites. Since we are dropping the data base I believe that we will revert to using a spreadsheet to keep track of our members.

I shared an old MOAA Membership spreadsheet with our Website Committee. It is an old out of date copy of the MOAA Roster. Only those who are invited can view and or edit the spreadsheet. We can of course email by copying the email addresses.

We can use this approach with our current data.

This can be kept on Google Drive and shared among key members. You can also export the sheet to a spreadsheet to a pdf to email to our members so they can contact other members.

One thing to remember is that the four or so people who can edit it could make a mistake and delete some data. Therefor it should be saved frequently to a hard drive in case someone accidentally screws up the data.

I would suggest that our new spreadsheet with member data be in two parts – the roster of our paying members, and the roster for everyone who we ever had a connection with

More info about our website development process:

RFP https://websitemoaa.blogspot.com/

Bid Analysis https://bidsmoas.blogspot.com/

Website Organization Newebsitemoas.blogspot.com

Photos for the website https://websitephotosmoas.blogspot.com/
 
____________________
We will link back to the following sites under the communication menu:


sarasotamoaa.com aka sarasotamoaa.blogspot.com

sarasotamoaa.us

sarasotamoaa.blogspot.com

thesarasotabreeze.blogspot.com

photosmoaa.blogspot.com

bigphotosmoas.blogspot.com

videosmoas.blogspot.com

www.militarystories.us

historymoas.blogspot.com


Social Media

facebook.com/sarasotamoaa

twitter.com/sarasotamoaa

linkedin.com/in/sarasotamoaa

pinterest.com/sarasotamoaa

 
Other MOAA Sites


moaa.org

moaafl.org   

WordPress Tutorial https://wordpress.com/learn/

everyone else that we have been involved with. No reason to delete them – keep on emailing them as an inducement for them to rejoin or donate. Does not cost us anything.

Discussion of Draft Website

We should have agreement on organization of the draft website

organization at:   https://sarasotamoaa.wordpress.com/

Is the organization and photos ok?  It is very lean and mean with a  short no frills opening page and six menu buttons. We can reorganize this if you wish. It does not have credit card transactions or member login although this could be added later. All the photos and info are our own and we can update it at anytime.

We will not have to update the new website very often. It has links to our blogs and social media which are updated whenever we have an event. 

The Sarasota Breeze has its own top menu button that goes to a blog with the latest Breeze and all the Breeze newsletters that we have on line. 

The one page that will see frequent updates is the Events page.
Woz and I can easily keep that up to date.

I have purchased the professional version of WordPress for myself, donation to MOAA. I think the free version will work for everyone else. The professional version permits a more robust set of options including full screen rotating photos.

Our Domain sarasotamoaa.com

Once we get our Wordpress site working we would pay to host it and send sarasotamoaa.com to it. We would let the old site go away. We should get any info off the site that we don't want to lose.

Our Domain Sarasotamoaa.com is hosted by
Genesisdomains.com for $9.00 per year. They used to host our old website and they could host the new website for approximately $100 a year depending on how much info we put on the site. There are a number of other companies that provide hosting.


Our Links That Are Frequently Updated

sarasotamoaa.us

sarasotamoaa.blogspot.com

thesarasotabreeze.blogspot.com

photosmoaa.blogspot.com

bigphotosmoas.blogspot.com

videosmoas.blogspot.com

www.militarystories.us

historymoas.blogspot.com



facebook.com/sarasotamoaa

twitter.com/sarasotamoaa

linkedin.com/in/sarasotamoaa

pinterest.com/sarasotamoaa

Website RFP Development

Worked with the Website Committee to write a Request For Proposal for a new web site. The Committee is composed of Kat Merriman, Christa Friedlander, Troy Scott, Ron Wozniak, George Tracy and Craig Hullinger with input from any Board Member welcome.

We posted the RFP on the Link below and emailed it to 23 firms that develop websites. Most of them are local.

https://websitemoaa.blogspot.com/

We have requested that the new site be written in Wordpress, which is a simple system that several of us can use to keep the site up to date. We are also asking the consultant to provide us an hourly consulting rate if we need help with major revisions to the site

We set up a Wordpress website ourselves. The system is fairly straight forward. We are not knowledgeable to design a quality site, but we can see that it is not too difficult to update. I have invited members of our committee to update the site for practice - if any of the other board members wish to try it let me know and I will invite you to join the site.

https://sarasotamoaa.wordpress.com/

We will post the bids as they come in on the site below. We will select the top two or three bids with our committee and pick the best consultant to negotiate price and options. We asked that the bids be made by May 10, 2020.

https://bidsmoas.blogspot.com/

We are working on selecting our photos for the new site on the blog below. If you have some nice photos you would like to include please email them to us.

https://websitephotosmoas.blogspot.com/

We have also begun to review the organization of our current site and will decide on the content to be included. Our thought at this point is to have less content. We must decide on the number of top level buttons, and write the content of the buttons.

https://websitemoaaorganization.blogspot.com/

Website Meeting May 4, 2020

Sites

RFP  https://websitemoaa.blogspot.com/   

Photos  https://websitephotosmoas.blogspot.com/   

Wordpress Test  https://sarasotamoaa.wordpress.com/

Top Buttons on the Website

The graphics below are the top buttons of our Website, National MOAA, The State, Sarasota Sister Cities and our Draft Site.

Sarasotamoaa.com     moaa.org     moaafl.org    sarasotasistercities.org   sarasotamoaa.wordpress.com

We will want to get as many decisions made about the content of the new website as soon as possible so the consultant can quickly develop the site.  The consultant won't know what we want so we need to tell him.

First Decision - are the top menu buttons on the current website what we need for our new site or should we change some of the names and organization? You can see how I have it presently organized - it is easy to change.

sarasotamoaa.com

Let me know your thoughts.  You can send us all an email or write your comments into the Google Doc below:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZP9-hhjC63CV0k91rBSdI4TyiGyM5BnA0Vj9BoDlEbo/edit?usp=sharing