Website Report 21-Feb-2016
Contents
Down Time
On Friday 19th February 2016, between approximately 13:50 and 17:00, the website was unavailable.
Support from TSOHost was requested and they responded saying that there was an issue affecting domains starting with the letter "n". The issue has now been resolved.
Achievements
Headlines
The front page now sports a headlines section, which can be used to bring important information to the attention of our visitors.
The headlines are actually held on a separate sub-page, for easier editing and so as not to disturb the other content on the front page.
E-mail Reorganisation ↑
Managing the original 17 mailboxes was proving to be a heavy workload, in terms of maintenance tasks such as message archiving and backups. In addition, there were:
- A huge number of duplicate messages, resulting in wasted storage.
- A massive amount of spam, also duplicated many times.
Therefore a major reorganisation is in progress, the bulk of which has been completed. We now have:
- A single mailbox for message storage and backups.
- All the addresses still work, though the messages are now relayed to the central mailbox, in addition to our personal ones.
- Message de-duplication is under way.
- Spam has been removed.
- Folders are being reorganised to reflect the categories we work on, rather than who the original sender/recipient was.
Below is a summary of the new message routing. All addresses are assumed to end with "@nawg.co.uk".
Official Personal
advertising -----> {Wendy Kearns} ------------------+
events ----------> {Anne Steward}-------------------+
+------> chairman --------> {Pam Fish} ----------------------+
| comp-100 --------> {Marvin Close} ------------------+
| editor ----------> {Steve Bowkett} -----------------+
| +----> membership ------> {Catherine Fitzsimons} ----------+
| | publicity -------> {Vanessa Lester} ----------------+
| | +--> secretary -------> {Chris Huck} --------------------+
| | | |
| | +--- comp-members |
| | +--- comp-nawg (deprecated) |
| | |
| +----- booking-festival |
| |
+------- comp-open |
+------- comp-pamspeople |
+------- info |
+------- publications |
+------- treasurer |
|
+--> web-admin <-----------------------------------------+
|
+--- committee --> All personal addresses given above,
who are committee members (not Wendy).
The "web-admin" address is the only actual mailbox, i.e. one that stores the messages on our mail server. It additionally receives messages generated by the website, e.g. by the contact form.
People ↑
Biographies
I've finally started to add mini-biographies to the website. So far, the completed ones are for:
- Gervase Phinn.
- Alan Ayckbourn.
- Marvin Close.
- Steve Bowkett.
- Pat Newcombe.
- New tutors & speakers for NAWGFest.
Roles Replace Names
Throughout the site, personal names have been replaced with role names, where appropriate. This is to reduce the amount of editing that will be necessary when staff changes occur.
For example, instead of saying things like "please contact Anne for festival details", it will now say "please contact the festival administrator for details".
Centralised Addresses ↑
Certain contact details are now stored centrally, rather than being repeated in different articles on the site. This is another tactic for reducing the editing workload when roles or other staff changes occur.
Examples include:
- The official NAWG address and phone number.
- The membership contact details.
- The BACS bank account details.
Categories & Tags ↑
Some minor changes and additions to the articles' taxonomy have been made, in order to improve organisation and navigation.
Software ↑
Website release 2.7.4 was deployed on 22nd December 2015. The main changes were:
- Social media buttons and integration.
- New "chain links" logo.
Full details are given in the release history.
Plans ↑
- Complete the e-mail reorganisation task.
- Review the documented plans and choose/prioritise the next tasks.