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What’s New on the “New and Improved” Web Site?

I’ve been pretty quiet lately and you probably haven’t noticed many changes on the old web site. Some of you may be wondering what’s up.

Well, to start with, let me explain a little about the web site. After our previous site hosting company decided to express their personal bigotry against crossdressing, not only did I move the web site to a new host, but did so using what is known as a “content management system” (CMS). The CMS is known as Drupal, if you’ve ever heard of it. There were several reasons for doing this, but the main ones were to be able to open up the ability for more people to contribute content, and to make it easier for someone to take over the site should something happen to me.

At any rate, there is a new version of Drupal that allows even more flexibility and extensibility. I have been working to move our current site to this new version. At the same time, I’ve been adding some new functionality – some will be immediately obvious, some won’t. But it is all designed to increase the value of the web site to KB.

This site is now running on that new version of Drupal.

Members Only

I am moving a few more things to the members’ only area. That means you will have to log in to see them – and that includes The Pink Slip. Hopefully these changes will encourage more members to visit the site more often.

My Account

The “My Account” (or profile) link has always been there but very few people ever visited it. There is a bunch of stuff that you can enter there to tell others about yourself. So you have full control over what shows up. That also means it’s totally up to you to add that information.

The “Meet Our Members” and “Meet the Board” pages now pull information directly from your profile. When someone views things you’ve contributed (see below) there is also a box that shows up on the left side under the menu that tells the viewer about you.

I have some ideas for future changes that will also draw upon this information, so make sure you go and update your “My Account” information soon.

Content That You Can Create Yourself

You must sign in first to create any content. For all of these, you start by clicking on the “Create content” link in the menu, then choosing the type of item you wish to submit. Hopefully the rest will be fairly intuitive.

To ensure that they are properly formatted and published at the correct time, the Pink Slip and Event submissions are delayed to be reviewed by a Board member.

The Pink Slip

One example of new functionality is that the Pink Slip is now moved onto the web site. Why?

Well, for two main reasons. The first is that you, the member, will be able to contribute your article directly without the hassle of email.

Did you ever say, “Gosh, I think I remember that Diana wrote something about labels a few months ago, but I don’t want to go back and read all the issues trying to find it.” You won’t have to! With the “new and improved” Pink Slip on the web site, you’ll be able to pull up all the articles that Diana has written, or all the articles concerning labels. Plus, you’ll see the first few paragraphs (called a teaser) to determine if that’s the one you want; then you can pull up the full article.

I’m pretty excited by this feature, both because it should make The Pink Slip more useful to you, and because I wrote the program.

Recipes

The recipe feature is still there, and I would love to see more members contributing to that. Right now, any member can sign in and create a recipe for everyone to see – and use.

Swap Shop

The classified ads feature has returned in a new form that is better integrated with the rest of the site. Your items will be available for swapping for a month and theer is a box on the left hand side that highlights the recent ads.

Calendar

I have replaced the calendar with a new method. It may not be as “pretty” as the old one, but it has allowed me to open the calendar up so that you can publish your own dates on it. (There was a bug on the current site that prevented me from doing this.) This content type is called an “Event.”

Voting

Another thing you’ll see soon is that voting for officers will be moved to the web site. This has several advantages, not the least of which is that current officers will not be able to see who voted for whom.