ASIS&T Web Site and Branding Project Status Update
Please see the message below from Kevin Hoffman from Seven Heads Design about the status of our web redesign project. You can view our progress at any time by visiting https://www.asist.org.
If you have any comments or questions about the developing site, please fill out the form at https://www.asist.org/contact/ and let us know what you think. Thanks so much!
–Diane Rasmussen Pennington, Chair, Task Force on Web Presence
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During December and early January, the Seven Heads Design team has been focused on two major efforts for the ASIS&T project.
First, we finalized the full back end of our WordPress installation, which is highly customized to ASIS&T’s needs. The most complex component of this effort includes integration with existing membership database, so that Chapters and SIGs will not lose any information about existing membership rosters, but the joining and renewing process can be fully automated, not requiring any manual effort on the part of ASIS&T staff members. We’ve also been adding a number of upgrades which simplify and improve this process, including
* User defined avatars (images)
* A much improved form design
* Online credit card payment that works well on any size or type of device (smart phones, tablets, and more)
* Simplified payment rules, removing smaller payments from the process based on SIG memberships and journal subscription type
* Username lookup to prevent an existing username from being reused before the whole form is filled out
Additional customization of WordPress includes the following modules:
* Group profile information (Chapters and SIG’s)
* News and blog content
* Information science pioneers from the history of information science
Volunteers and staff have been inputting and reviewing existing content since the beta launch in November. One of the ASIS&T volunteers single handedly input 40 different biographies of pioneers. Thanks!
The other major effort has been finalizing the branding guidelines and associated materials which govern how to represent the ASIS&T brand in different situations, such as in sub groups, printed materials, and emails/website content. To that end, we’ve developed and rendered every single Chapter and SIG with a simple logo to start with that follows the branding rules. We’ll be making these materials available to ASIS&T members on the beta site shortly, most likely before the end of January.
Finally, we are testing and refining the processes for renewing membership, and the membership directory lookup, and squashing bugs as they arise in our beta. So far we’ve added over 150 bug fixes and improvements to beta site since launch, and we continue to address anything that arises in regular use. We feel confident that we are on track for a formal launch some time in February, at which time we’ll continue to make fixes for anything that comes up after the formal launch for a few weeks.